If you don’t know who Tool is, you should check them out, you’ll know why my username is “3rdeye88(thirdeye where it has to be spelled).”
Angry at the world? They can help with that.
Their earlier work is very good at expressing the whole teenage angst pissed at the world thing.
Also, what’s the policy on posting music with explicit lyrics?
But its not all just wishing LA would fall into the Ocean and being angry about the state of the world. Tool can be really positive, uplifting and inspiring to. It was the aggression in their music that appealed to me at first back in High School, but it was the positive message within their aggressive music and the way that they acknowledge anger is an emotion that needs expressing that showed me that its not all bad. Its good with the bad.
The music itself was also very compelling to me. I became a musician because of Tool. I picked the Bass because of their Bassist, Justin Chancellor, and also because one of my friends at the time had a bass and showed me how to play it(sort of).
Tool is hands down my absolute favorite band in the history of bands and music. They’re not your average band though. They’re kind of a band that shouldn’t work, yet does. I encourage those of you unfamiliar to them with an attention span and a willingness to explore to check them out. They’re a total trip and I owe who I am as a person to this band like many say they owe who they are to Bionicle. Bionicle isn’t even a close second compared to them and That’s saying something because Bionicle still had a big impact on me and my life.
To other Tool fans out there You rock and have great taste in music. Lets talk Tool.
I’ve listened to the first two albums and I’ve been meaning to listen to the rest, but I haven’t gotten around to it. I thought what I heard was decent though, but I wouldn’t call myself a fan.
So just Opiate and Undertow? You really need to listen to the other three. They’re totally different and its the band when they’ve really grown. I strongly Urge you to check out Lateralus though. I think the general consensus among Tool Fans is that’s the Tool album to listen to. I agree to an extent, but each album is really good.
No, Undertow and Ænima. I know I shouls listen to Lateralus though, it’s like the most spoken of album. I’ll get aroun to it soon, it’s just incovenient because I use Spotify most of the time and I have to use YouTube to listen to the albums.
Oh okay. Tool’s first release was an EP called Opiate. So that’s what I thought you meant. Well Aenima is still good, but Lateralus and 10,000 Days is like next level stuff.
The full albums are on youtube so you just gotta put them on once and that’s it.
Lateralus is a great album lyrically. The music is of course good to but musically I think 10KD was more refined and innovative. It took things to another level. Tool’s always been able to 1 up themselves musically. So when I have to pick a fave album. I’m always conflicted between these two. I like them equally for different reasons But it was Aenima that got me into them. The raw aggression there really intrigued me as an angsty Teenager in the early-Mid 2000’s, and then my musical focus shifted to stuff like this, and of course the other Maynard Bands(APC and Puscifer), Nine Inch Nails, System Of A Down and the like. Before that I was listening to a lot of the pop-punk stuff that was popular in the early 2000’s Now I look back on it and think it was Sh*t.
10KD is still lyrically poignant, but where Lateralus is more introspective and that’s been more helpful to me than anything, 10KD is more “extrospective” in a way. Also, there’s a lovely 11 minute track about being abducted by aliens and institutionalized, so enjoy that bugger smack dab in the middle of the album to.
Then you’re missing out on a lot of good aspects of music. Especially Tool.
To be blunt. Tool isn’t for stupid people. Its the thinking man’s music. Its all very intellectual and cerebral, yet very emotional to. There’s a lot of good music out there that fits a perfect harmony of enriching the mind and the soul. I don’t read books because my eyesigth makes it hard. on a computer I can zoom in and its lit up. So I go listen to smart music, and those are my books. And Tool is the War and peace of Rock music.
Oh well that’s good. I don’t listen to lyrics the first listen either. I listen to the music first. Cull what I can on my own and with some bands automatically go look up the lyrics, but some, only if what I hear interests me and I want to read more into it(literally).
Alright, well I’ve heard Lateralus and 10,000 Days a lot now, and I prefer Lateralus but I can understand why you like 10,000 Days a lot. Lots of great moments on both but I think Lateralus was consistently better. Schism and Parabola and those tracks were all good (of course) but the one that I’m hooked on the most is Reflection… by far.
HA Reflection is probably my favorite track on Lateralus. It drones on for quite a while it builds, breaks, comes back, builds some more. Its just a really dynamic song. Its also played after reflection live and they usually go straight into Triad so its amazing to hear those three songs all strung together live just like on the album.
For the longest time I went by a username called Crucifytheego which is a reference to that song.
I can definitely see why you like Lateralus more. It is a much more solid and cohesive Album. I like 10KD for the instrumentation aspect. Also, even though I got into tool just after Lateralus, 10KD was the first album where I went through the “Cycle” so to say. The album came out and I got all the magazines I could read all the articles I could Tool was my first concert and it was the year the album came out I got to ride the album release roller coaster on that album. So its sentimental to me for that reason. But also it instrumentally really went further. They experimented a lot more actually changed their sound and the gear they use some to. Tonally its the best sounding Tool album yet.
Recently got into them thanks to a friend of mine, who’s a big Maynard James Keenan fan.
I find a lot of their songs to be very atmospheric and good to listen to when I want to get things done, such as drawing/homework etc.
Currently Ænima is my favorite album (with Ænema being my favorite song XP) but I’ve listened to practically everything they’ve done at some point. I really like their progression and how they switch up their beats a lot, makes playing their songs on guitar kind of challenging, specially for someone who’s used to thrash metal.
I found them on my own. Well kinda through a sort of natural progression of liking bands I heard on the radio. It started with bands like Breaking Benjamin, Trapt, Chevelle and Three Days Grace, then noticing they all cited Tool as an influence and then paying more attention to Tool on the radio as they came on. Then I realized “oh they wrote that song and that other song too okay.” This was around 2003 so not too long after Lateralus came out. Then I finally decided I needed to get their music. So I wrote down the songs I knew I liked, and when I went to the record store I looked at which CD’s had which songs and I ultimately got Aenima first. Then Lateralus, Undertow, and Opiate. Not too long after I had got up to date 10KD came out and like I was saying to Invictus, I rode the cycle of them releasing an album. That’s how I got into them.
The songs off Aenima are what hooked me. The aggression and outwardly expressed anger of the title track really spoke to me at just the right time in my youth. Long story short, I had plenty to be angsty and angry about come my teenage years so Tool really addressed that and allowed me to express it in a harmless way. Then delving into Lateralus took that anger and turned it into a really positive outlook on life and myself.
I didn’t really have that problem because I kinda learned how to play bass by learning Tool songs. The first riff I ever learned how to play on bass was the main riff from Schism. SO right then and there I was playing 6/4 time I just didn’t know it yet. I also took guitar lessons and that helped a lot to. Now I sort of have the inverse problem of people trying to learn syncopation and odd time, I find it harder to write a straight 4/4 riff than I do in something like 5/4 or something really syncopated. Thanks to tool and all the post rock/metal bands I listen to like Isis, Karnivool, Russian Circles and a list of other crazy stuff, I eat that crazy SH*T for breakfast as a musician. LOL
What I love about Tool’s music is how it defies convention at almost every turn. You’ve got a bassist playing guitar range stuff, a guitarist who isn’t trying to cram a million zillion notes into every .5 seconds of musical space, a singer with a great range and a really unique voice, and a drummer who titanically thunders out math equations, then all of them rather weird esoteric individuals who are into some really deep trippy stuff.
Been listening to 10,000 Days again lately. I forgot how much I enjoyed this album. It’s been like 4 and a half years or something like that. I lack a lot of motivation to revisit Tool since it’s not on Spotify.
I dunno, there are no other rock bands I think I could really compare it to, that would have heard of at least. It’s dark, moody and reflective but very often it gets pretty aggressive and loud.
You just have to hear it, but I would say on top of that the songs get longer and more complex over the course of their four albums. And I’d say if you’re thinking of hearing it you need to commit to hearing all four instead of calling it quits after the first.
They’re broadly described as Alternative Metal (drop-tuned riffs, a mix of singing and screaming, a gritty feel even if it’s not fully aggressive) and Progressive Metal (incorporating odd time signatures, plus existential lyrics). Their songwriting is sometimes built around ratios with mystical connotations, such as the “golden ratio”, which appears in patterns in “Forty-Six and Two”; and a building block of that ratio, the Fibonacci Sequence, structures the lyrics to “Lateralus”.
As Dave said above, a lot of alt/metal or post/grunge bands, including [quote=“3rdeye88, post:13, topic:541”]
Breaking Benjamin, Trapt, Chevelle and Three Days Grace
[/quote]
cite Tool as an influence. Sometimes that similarity is played straight, but usually it isn’t. Some of the tracks you can enjoy on its own; others you may need to think harder about or know the context of to really appreciate.
“The Grudge” was my starting point, and is still one of my favorite Tool tracks. The album it’s on, Lateralus, is considered by most to be their best album; it’s probably also their most proggy album.
