TOOL - C/D!?

best pitchfork review ever!

Dud, incidently.

As far as "electronics and industry," their only song is NOT "Stinkfist". Tell me where they use keyboards and high-pitched squealing. Industry is just one part of the whole. Songs like "46&2" have intros that are industrial ("Useful Idiot"), and Third Eye has a little in the background. They have many different designs to each song. They have originality, and character. I would love to see you compose something as brilliant and definitive as Tool. Have you tried? Have you listened to the lyrics either? How well they match with the music?

As far as "opus," just because they use the whole CD doesn't mean that it's an opus. It's just a CD, like any other CD you pick up. It does not delineate all of their music.

Oh no, you have summoned an angry beast!

Tool

Use the search function please. ;-)

Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must
Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines.

Black then white are all I see in my infancy.
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
lets me see there is so much more
and beckons me to look through to these infinite possibilities.
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn outside the lines of reason.
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition leaving all these opportunities behind.

Feed my will to feel this moment urging me to cross the line.
Reaching out to embrace the random.
Reaching out to embrace whatever may come.

I embrace my desire to
feel the rhythm, to feel connected
enough to step aside and weep like a widow
to feel inspired, to fathom the power,
to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain,
to swing on the spiral
of our divinity and still be a human.

With my feet upon the ground I lose myself
between the sounds and open wide to suck it in,
I feel it move across my skin.
I'm reaching up and reaching out,
I'm reaching for the random or what ever will bewilder me.
And following our will and wind we may just go where no one's been.
We'll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one's been.

Spiral out. Keep going, going...

that said, Aenima is still ok, and so is Undertow...

I feel like this record was made just for me by super-smart aliens or something... It's the best Tool record because it's the longest.

This Pitchfork review is utterly classic in every way. Does Brent D still write record reviews anywhere?

also, i disagree about their live shows. Stinkfist is the only song I remember as being a good live experience. for the most part, you coulda just thrown on the cd and played it really really loudly.

pushit on salival is a huge exception, of course.

this is also another band vs fans group.

That Pitchfork review is hilarious, and in my mind every bit as classic as Dave Q.'s Yes assessment.

Tool helped get me through high school. I'll always love them for that.

That Brent DiCrescenzo Pitchfork review of Lateralus linked above...jesus that's awful. That's wayyyyy more of a wankfest than any Tool record.

The Something Awful Dr. David Thorpe thing, however, is funny. Tool do have some hilariously overzealous fans, that's for sure! But the music's pretty good, if you like proggy metal stuff.

The other day my coworker and I were getting something to eat on a quick break and we heard "Schism" floating from a car stereo. We approved.

But what if you got into them when you were 22 in 1993?

As for being metal or not, my ex said they reminded her of late eighties Metallica most of all.

chuck eddy alert! lol.

anyway, yeah, technically they're more post-"grunge"/Jane's Addiction/Soundgarden/Helmet/alt-rawk or whatever. But seriously if they had first dropped in the 80's they WOULD be called metal, probably lumped in with proggy thrash like Voivod or something.

i've never found Tool 'lifeless' as Siegbran does. i think the main thing with the band is that even though they are a heavy rock band, they are very precise and controlled. there is very little chaos and anarchy in their sound. maybe that is why they can sound 'clinical', and that's probably too stick-up-the-ass for some people. but i think thats underestimating them as they can be surprisingly melodic and cathartic when you least expect them to be (at least for me).

but i enjoy tool probably now a lot more than i did when i was heavily into them as a teenager, because with listening to them now it's not so tied up with them as 'my band' and how that reinforces my identity.

annnnnyhoo, just giving my two cents worth.

(the one that starts 3 minutes or so in)

i think it's an underrated album.

also, bit the bullet and got tickets to finally see them in january, but mainly because blonde redhead is opening(???)

i impulse bought two tix for me and my best friend

Yeah, I think I'm going with a pal. Pricey, but you only live once, and besides, those gongs don't pay for themselves.

I'm a bit too late for a ticket to Antwerp (venue sucks anyway) or Amsterdam. 330 euros for a ticket in Köln? haha, no thanks.

Tool is of course pretty awesome. I think we can all agree the best part of Tool is Danny; I could listen to an entire album that's just Danny. At least by default, I think we can also all agree that the worst part of Tool is Maynard; I could listen to a Tool album with no vocals at all. That said, a Tool album without Danny would I think be noticeably worse. But would a Tool album with someone other than Maynard be better?

The last album barely has any Maynard on it

True. I think they got impatient? Ironically, the one track that sounds like it's mostly Danny kind of sucks.

maynard sounds good i like his voice tho

At the same time, I wish he was singing in another language or something.

his voice is just texture to me, i dont pay attention to their lyrics really at all

Someone else singing the same songs would still be singing the same words so I don't think the baseline argument here has been thought out at all

Huh? I meant someone else singing different words from the start. Like, if they had a different singer from the beginning.

Now I'm envisioning a reality show contest like "Rock Star: Tool," or them scouring the Philippines for a cover band ringer or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHUg7Kroepc

"I like Tool but they would be better if they sang completely different songs" is a take, sure

what if they sang songs about Tools. like allen wrenches

If every Tool song was about tools and not just sung *by* a Tool, Maynard would rise in my estimation to at least the third best part of the band.

xpost So is being intentionally obtuse. The drums, guitars and bass would be intact, so functionally the same songs, just with a different singer/words. Or, as I said, even no singer/words. How essential is Maynard to the equation, is the question. Like, there is no doubt REM without Michael Stipe is not REM. But Maynard (as illustrated by posts noting his relative absence on the last record, or one whose lyrics can easily just be ignored) doesn't always seem the most pivotal component of the band.

I do really like the last song on Lateralus but not sure if that's more becuase no singing or because it sounds like metal Can.

Ah I see, you don’t actually know what a song is

I could listen to a Tool album with no vocals at all

this is me but with Radiohead. I'd probably love Radiohead if there were no vocals

Maynard's voice is cool. It's distinctive, at least. It never bothered me.

I wanna know what a song is
I want you to show me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dr6ZlcR6Fo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zfYO9sZjrE

^ one of the comments: should have named the band "Toot"

Didn't I just see something about one of them peeing on the audience?

yeah i just read that too D:

oh - so THAT's why they're suddenly trending.

The Ex Eye record from a couple of years ago might satisfy the desire for an instrumental Tool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8Xq9enRx18

i was at this festival and am beside myself that I missed the peeing

there's video footage and it's way more explicit than you'd expect

I didn't really know who this band was or what their deal was but now that I feel like I do it seems more shocking; like they're not some shock band, those look like a bunch of fairly serious professional musicians to me.

Also I have always been under the impression that maynard was extremely critical to the band and that he wrote the music and lyrics. if he doesn't actually write the music then he could easily go. I guess he kind of does that anyway since Pucifer is 10X more prolific than Tool.

I thought guitar riffs and bass lines are how Tool songs start out, then drums get written, with vocals being the last?

Pretty sure Maynard is indeed the last thing added and has nothing to do with the music. They accumulate guitar, bass, drum ideas, refine and cobble them together over many months, then he adds vox and lyrics and song titles. I've seen a few interviews with the band where they admit they have to walk him through some of the tricky stuff to help him come up with lyrics and melodies that fit, and interviews with him where he'll finally come up with something but by the time he brings it to the band they've changed or otherwise rearranged the music. Sounds like a tough slog.

From what I understand about Rush it was almost the opposite. Neil would accumulate lyrics, Geddy and Alex would accumulate riffs and songs, Neil would give Geddy some lyrics, Geddy and Alex would collect their riffs and stuff and arrange them into songs, with Alex programming drums, then Neil would come in toward the end, listen to the demos and come up with his own drum parts. Then I think the band and producer would tinker further with arrangements. More of a full, equal collaboration.

Oh man Danny Carey pulled a cake boss pic.twitter.com/Fauu0rBQfu

— the ghost of txtmas past (@metaltxt) December 14, 2021

Tool has a drummer?

"But I'm a tool!" "yeah buddy, arms behind your back"

this tour's setlist feels so refreshing after years of Schism/Stinkfist/Aenima/46&2/Parabol etc : https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/tool/2022/smoothie-king-center-new-orleans-la-b88396e.html

(I love those songs, don't get me wrong)

Part of the last rehearsal before the tour was streamed on instagram on "crap gear" & without Maynard: The Pot & The Patient

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6iJlmb-EcY

They should do a club tour of just the three of them rehearsing on crap gear.

^

The video of Danny Carey playing The Pot with those young music students is very endearing.

then sharing The Pot with them afterwards

https://store.toolband.com/store

Fine art Foetus In Skull coming Dec 16th

https://www.fourtheye.net/2022/12/tool-fetus-in-skull-maquette-coming-soon/

I'm betting on "hella expensive"

The Beato interview with Danny Carey is great. It's remarkable that, according to Carey, he's never done any Tool drum tracking to a click, but I guess it makes sense, because how would that even work? He also offers the flipside to old people complaining about computer-perfect tempos in contemporary recordings, that some young people raised on quantized grid perfection might find the varying tempos of old stuff (from classical to classic rock) equally frustrating. I wonder.