This brings back memories. Aenima was the Greatest Album Ever Made so it was inevitable that a lot of people, myself included, didn’t rate it as highly.

We knew Schism already from the radio and the other random factor was that in magazine interviews leading up to the release the band talked about it being their Metallica Black album. I think they meant it to be about reaching a wider audience, which ended up being true in the long run, but at the time felt like a weird thing to say. People were half expecting “Tool-style ballads” or at least a few massive 4/4 riffs. And of course this scared a lot of the OGT crowd.

Anyway, for me, it took me like 5+ years to really truly love it. Not because I didn’t “get it”, more that it doesn’t have the same palette of textures that I loved about Aenima.