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About This Track
'Intolerance' opens Tool's debut album with a confrontation between desire for trust and the repeated betrayal that makes trust impossible. The narrator wants to believe, to have faith, to move past suspicion, but the subject's pattern of deception leaves no room for tolerance. Each verse tightens the knot: first the plea for faith, then the performance of praise whilst the other hides behind virtue, finally the recognition that complicity runs both ways. No one emerges innocent. The song builds its argument through repetition, the chorus hammering the same three words until they become a kind of incantation, a spell that cannot be broken. By the bridge, "you lie, cheat, and steal" has stopped being accusation and become simple fact, repeated so many times it approaches inevitability. The track's intro, a sound variously described as a scuba tank emptying or someone drowning, sets the album's waterlogged atmosphere from the first second, anchoring the song's emotional suffocation in something physical and irreversible.
"Intolerance" is a track by Tool, from the album Undertow, released 6th April 1993. Full lyrics are available below. Dork has published 1 article about Tool.
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