Late to vinyl, heavily bootlegged, and worth getting right the first time.
Tool built one of the most devoted audiences in rock while treating physical releases as objects rather than product. Undertow arrived in 1993, Ænima in 1996, Lateralus in 2001, 10,000 Days in 2006 and Fear Inoculum in 2019, a pace that gave every record years to settle into the catalog before the next one landed.
The vinyl history is the collecting story. Several albums reached vinyl long after their CD release. Lateralus came out in 2001 and did not get an official vinyl pressing until 2005, a four-sided picture disc in a plastic gatefold. Fear Inoculum had no official vinyl at all until 2022, when an ultra deluxe five-LP boxset appeared at shows in February and a standard three-LP followed that August. That gap between demand and legitimate supply is exactly the vacuum bootleggers fill.
Expect to sort through unofficial pressings on any Tool search. Discogs flags a large number of Lateralus and Ænima releases as unofficial, many of them European and cosmetically convincing. Buy from sellers who photograph the dead wax, confirm the release carries a real Volcano or Tool Dissectional catalog number, and treat a picture disc priced well under the market as a warning rather than a find. Legitimate copies are expensive, so the cheap one is usually cheap for a reason.
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