Tool is great and I think you have started with by far their best album. Aenima is also really good as well as Opiate. This was my favorite rock band of the 90s and I saw them live a few times which was a real treat. I know I may be in the minority but I thought that Lateralus sucked. Super boring and monotinous, missing much of the awesome time signatures and changes of the early stuff, to me it sounds like with the earlier stuff they really sat down together as a band and worked the hell out of a song till it was really something special, but with the newer stuff I get the feeling everyone is sort of just dropping their parts in individually.
I liked as well the first A Perfect Circle album, Mer De Noms. They seemed to get crappier with time as well, maybe I haven't given some of the latest stuff a fair shake, but to my ear Maynard (the singer) just lost a lot of the edge and weirdness he had as a younger man.
Of course it's all an opinion, but it seems with many awesome raw rock bands the more polished they get the more of the raw edge you loved so much about the first albums seems to get lost with time
I liked as well the first A Perfect Circle album, Mer De Noms. They seemed to get crappier with time as well, maybe I haven't given some of the latest stuff a fair shake, but to my ear Maynard (the singer) just lost a lot of the edge and weirdness he had as a younger man.
Of course it's all an opinion, but it seems with many awesome raw rock bands the more polished they get the more of the raw edge you loved so much about the first albums seems to get lost with time