I do not expect to introduce any of you to something new with this post today. After all, you’re a fool if you do not know Tool! They are among the most well-known – to the uneducated general public in any case – Metal bands of all time and have been of great influence to many bands and artists in the genre. They may be on Metal’s softer side, but that doesn’t make them a less respectable band, not even for those who prefer Extreme Metal, like ourselves. It doesn’t all need to possess concrete smashing capabilities.

I discovered Tool when I was about 16, when their 2001 Lateralus album had been released recently. I was still a bit of an ignorant chap – fuck, I’m still ignorant, but at least now I’m no longer ignorant about the fact that I’m ignorant – and I listened to Rock, which I picked up from MTV and shit like that. Back then MTV would still occasionally play proper music (Tool, Soundgarden, Nirvana, stuff like that), whereas it seems to be a 110% worthless crap that’s being cashed upon big time these days, unless you’re a night creature of course, and can keep your eyes open long enough to watch the middle-of-the-fuckin’-night Metal show. Tool’s one of the bands I discovered that way, by means of their Schism video clip, which is an absolute piece of art.

Anyway, I don’t pride myself on many of the bands that I picked up and listened to in those days, but some of them have stuck. Not so much that I still listen to them a lot, but in the sense that when I do hear them again these days I still consider them producers of high quality music. You can feel it coming: Tool’s one of those!

So, what else is new? Well, fuckin’ nothing actually. After Lateralus the band released one more album, in 2006, titled 10,000 days. I utterly and completely missed that, probably because at that time I was well underway of my tour d’exploration of Extreme Metal and I preferred vomiting on soft-ass shit. By now that has changed a bit, as I realize, as I said, it doesn’t all need to split skulls and rape asses in order to be quality music.

Still wouldn’t have meant I would have gone to check out these guys again actively on my own initiative though. The reason why I’m checking them out and writing about them now is Rufio, who was eager to learn my views on the band’s work. And so I set out for the task, quickly focusing on 10,000 Days, as that’s still completely new to me.

It became clear pretty much immediately that Tool is still the highly creative, highly freaky, super original and incredibly enjoyable band that it was before on the album. Unorthodox rhythms and guitar tunings are only part of the cause for it. The music still isn’t just awesome to listen to while you’re intoxicated on alcohol – or some other substance of your choosing – but it actually requires intoxication to be fully understood.

I dropped an ear on those tracks off the album for which the band has created music videos, being Vicarious, The Pot and Jambi. Vicarious is the only one I could find on YouTube though, so we’ll roll with it for today. It somehow seems to fulfill the same role as Schism on Lateralus, though I can’t exactly figure out why I think that. Anyway, enough tripping, here’s the song. Enjoy the fucker!

The band’s official site can be found here. Over and out!

Tags: alternative, American, heavy, progressive

This entry was posted on Monday, March 7th, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under Music Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.