Match the 'Aenima' Lyrics Trivia Quiz

Answer: Pushit

'Pushit' is speculated by Tool fans to be about an abusive relationship and, at nearly ten minutes, is one of the longest tracks on the album. There are two different versions of the song, the original on 'Ænima' and the version on the 2000 live album 'Salival', which features percussion from tabla player Aloke Dutta.

When played live, 'Pushit' is accompanied by a somewhat blurry video of women walking around and pulling at each other's arms.

Answer: Aenema

'Ænema' is the third single off 'Ænima' and a portmanteau of 'Ænima' and 'enema'. Featuring one of drummer Danny Carey's best drumming performances (in my opinion), it is about the city of Los Angeles being flooded, and how the only way to fix it and make it a better place is to 'flush it all away'. If the citizens of Los Angeles want to survive this flood, they must learn to swim. 'See you down in Arizona Bay' is another Bill Hicks reference. The song also takes pot shots at L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, a cult beloved by many Hollywood celebrities.

The video, like many of Tool's creepy videos, was a stop-motion video directed by guitarist Adam Jones. It featured a humanoid alien in a room filling with water.

Answer: Jimmy

'Jimmy' is the nickname of Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan, and the song of the same name is about his mother, Judith Marie Keenan. When Keenan was eleven, his mother suffered a stroke that paralysed her and caused her to need a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Ohio is Keenan's home state. Keenan has also claimed that 'Jimmy' is a sequel of sorts to 'Prison Sex'.

The song 'Wings for Marie' on '10,000 Days' was inspired by Keenan's mother's death, and 'Judith', one of the signature songs of Keenan's side project A Perfect Circle, was also written about her; the lyrics of the song question why Judith continued to believe in G-d despite the hardships she went through.

Answer: Third Eye

Tool are big fans of the comedian Bill Hicks, citing him as one of the inspirations for 'Ænima' (and quoting him in the liner notes), and 'Third Eye' contains a sample of him talking about drugs and how they inspired so many great musicians. The 'third eye' is a Buddhist and Hindu concept of an invisible eye on a person's forehead, which enables them to perceive things beyond normal vision.

Some users of hallucinogenic drugs see them as a way of opening the 'third eye' and gaining greater insight; in an interview with Australian newspaper 'The Age', Keenan talked about how 'Ænima' was an attempt to 'open people up in some way and help open their third eye and help them on a path'.

Answer: Eulogy

A eulogy is a speech made at a dead person's funeral, often talking about the things they did in life. The Tool song of the same name features distorted vocals and is about a messianic figure; fans have speculated that this may be Jesus Christ or L. Ron Hubbard, as 'nine-one-two' is thought to be a reference to the addresses of the San Bernardino Valley Church of Scientology branch. 'Eulogy' is also one of a handful of songs recorded as a demo with original Tool bassist Paul D'Amour before he left, the others being 'Stinkfist', 'Ænema' and 'Pushit'.

These demos were uploaded online in 2007. D'Amour also co-wrote 'H'.

Answer: H

'H', the second single off 'Ænima', was originally titled 'Half-Empty'. Although the meaning of the song is unclear, Keenan has hinted that it may be about inner conflict and trying to decide the best course of action. At a gig in Philadelphia in 1996, when introducing the song, he talked about old Warner Brothers cartoons showing a character with an angelic version of themselves on one shoulder, and a devilish version on the other.

While the angel gives good advice and the devil tries to tempt the character into doing evil, the angel is not always in the right, and the devil is not always wrong, and ultimately the character must make their own mind up. Keenan also hinted that the song may be inspired by his son, saying, "My son's name is Devo H. That's all I'll say."

Answer: Forty Six & 2

'Forty Six & 2', which is one of my favourite songs on the album, is the fourth single from 'Ænima' and is named for a theory by the New Age author Drunvalo Melchizedek that suggests humans will evolve into a new state of consciousness with 46 autosomes (non-sex chromosomes) instead of the current 44; the '2' of the title is a reference to the two sex chromosomes humans have.

Some Tool fans have speculated that the song may also be inspired by Carl Jung's theory of the shadow, the suppressed part of the human psyche.

Heavy stuff. 'Rolling Stone' ranked 'Forty Six & 2' in 53rd place on their list of '100 Greatest Heavy Metal Songs of All Time'.

Answer: Die Eier von Satan

'Die Eier von Satan' is one of the odder tracks on the album, and literally means 'the eggs of Satan'. It is also the least performed track. It is a spoken word track, in German, with the phrase 'und keine Eier' ('and no eggs') being repeated throughout. The above lyric means 'half a cup of powdered sugar, a quarter teaspoon of salt, a pinch of Turkish hashish', and is part of a recipe for a Mexican wedding biscuit. The German vocalist on the song is Marko Fox, who plays bass in Zaum, one of Carey's side projects; the recipe is based on biscuits that his grandmother used to bake for him.

The 'magic words', 'sim sa la bim, bam ba, sa la du, sa la dim', come from a German poem, 'Auf einem Baum ein Kuckuck' ('a cuckoo in a tree'), which has been covered by Nena of '99 Luftballons' fame.

Answer: Hooker with a Penis

The title of 'Hooker with a Penis' is a misnomer; the song actually deals with the concept of 'selling out'. The narrator in the song - presumably Keenan himself - is accused of selling out and sucking up to 'the Man' by a fan who claims to be 'an OGT' ('original gangster Tool') who had been into the band since 'Opiate', their first EP. ('The Man' is a countercultural catch-all term for the corporate world and figures of authority.) The narrator responds that he has indeed sold out, and that both he and the fan are 'the Man', and the fan is a hypocrite, since he still buys Tool's albums even though he thinks they're sell-outs. The narrator also notes the irony of the fan drinking a can of Coke while saying this, Coca-Cola being a big corporation.

Billy Howerdel, who would later join Keenan in A Perfect Circle, remixed 'Hooker with a Penis' as a lounge music track. It was played between sets over the tannoy system at Lollapalooza 1997.

Answer: Stinkfist

'Stinkfist' is the first single off 'Ænima' and one of the most well-known; if you went to a rock club in the '90s or '00s (like the late Jilly's Rockworld in Manchester, where I spent my student years), you'll probably have heard it. This being a family website, I'm not going to go into detail about what the song is about, although Keenan has stated that the song can be taken metaphorically; it is partly inspired by a friend of Carey's who 'wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty', and can also be seen as a metaphor for extreme ways of seeking pleasure. Nevertheless, radio stations did have to edit the single to make it more radio-friendly!

VJs were also not allowed to use the name of the song on some stations, although Matt Pinfield, who presented '120 Minutes' on MTV, dropped hints by waving his fist in front of his nose while introducing the song as 'Track 1' and telling viewers to buy the album if they wanted to know the actual title.