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Why You Like/Dislike Tool for the Wrong Reasons


Maynard James Keenan on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, 12th July 2017


Hey, do you listen to Tool? Did you know they’re on Spotify now? If you’ve heard anyone say this, if these questions have ever made you want to smash your head through a wall then this post is relevant to you. If you’re even remotely associated with the rock and metal community you’ll know that Tool are everywhere right now, and whether you love it or hate it I think everyone has something to learn from both them and the way the internet is portraying them. I think it is important we all step down from elitism and open our collective minds to new music and art regardless of agendas and grudges.

Who you callin’ a tool?


First of all, if you don’t know who Tool are then I’ll keep it simple:

Tool are ‘an American rock band’ according to a Google search, but I would describe them as being closer to classic 90s metal with a mix of heavy and ambient tunes. They’re famous for writing music in weird, unconventional timings and for having deep lyrics about, well, metaphoric enemas and religion and other good stuff. They have recently surfaced from a 13 year break which is part of the reason there is so much news and hype suddenly surrounding them. They recently debuted ‘Fear Inoculum’ and announced the album to be released on the 30th of August, 2019.

The Context of Stigma


With all this new excitement about an old band making a comeback there is obviously going to be both good and bad press involved. As in any fanbase there are different types of people; hardcore and casual fans; two terms I will probably use often over the course of this post and two demographics I’m sure we are all familiar with. The other surprise that they brought to us recently is their sudden change of heart regarding streaming platforms. Until recently, Tool’s music was only ever available on disk and they refused to release anything onto Spotify/Apple music/etc. However, this has changed as of summer 2019 and you can now find their entire discography on these platforms. While most people would assume this is obviously a positive thing, hardcore fans argue that it was an ingenuine move and that they have given in to fighting the disease plaguing modern artists that is streaming revenue. This leads me on to my first point about why you might dislike the band.

Pride = Prejudice


Something that often drives people insane about any trend is when it is constantly hyped up by ‘elitist’ groups in an attempt to use said trend as a platform to boost their egos. My example regarding Tool in this sense is the way hardcore fans are often seen treating the musicality and unspoken borderline-esoteric intentions of the band as more than what it really is. The most common case of this can be seen in the song ‘Lateralus’, featured on their third album. It is a well known fact that the title track follows a mathematic rhythmic pattern, called the Fibonacci Sequence. The importance of this is the relation it has to the natural world: many things follow this pattern in growth, such as growth points in flowers, the breeding of rabbits and even the human facial structure (explaining why someone with plastic surgery looks unnatural). There is a great article here if you want to read more about it, but vocalist Maynard James Keenan’s lyrics reflect this too in the narrative of the song, talking about developing as an infant:

‘Black then white are All I see In my infancy Red and yellow then came to be Reaching out to me Lets me see’

But why am I hammering this home when I’ve already stated that this is common knowledge? Well I would argue that people take this far too seriously and praise the band incorrectly. No one likes a snob who claims to be better than the people around them, or in this case, other musicians. Tool are often branded as this, being labelled as over-pretentious due to their ‘complex music’, while there are clearly other artists out there who are more technical and confusing musically. Seriously, the amount of times I have casually brought up Tool and had Periphery org Meshugah shoved down my throat faster than you can say “but Tool have stated that many of these bands have positively influenced them”.


I recently watched an old episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast where Keenan was the main guest. Covering a mixture of topics, including the Mayweather/McGregor fight and growing your own food, the topic of Lateralus came up and how it came to be. Rogan asks Keenan where the idea for using the Fibonacci Sequence emerged from and, surprisingly, Keenan plays it off, stating that it was ‘a complete accident’. He then goes even further to state that he believed it to be a ‘very pedestrian, sophomoric move’ to include the numbers in the song and that ‘pointing it out […] was more of a d*** joke’ (metaphorically). This goes to show that the stereotype surrounding them has been created by the community and is nothing more than an assumption and makes you wonder how many other songs this rings true for.


Again, I am aware I’m going on a bit of a rant here but why is it relevant? Quite simply, it paints the artist in a false light. No one wants to be accused of being in-genuine and, not only does this damage the image of the artist as it can come across as their fault, but it drives away potential new fans as they might not want to be considered arrogant and egotistical along with the more extreme fans that like to shout about this.

The Importance of Song-Writing, Image and General Creative Conceptuality

I promise I will wrap this up soon as Tool are quickly becoming old news for many casual listeners, but this part is aimed at you. Something that many people don’t see is the song-writing process that goes on behind-the-scenes. Again, Tool are both praised and slandered for being technical musicians but tear your attention away from the seemingly straightforward pentatonic riffs and the wide use of time signature changes and instead focus on the things you don’t consider immediately. Things such as lyrics, guitar tone, percussion instruments and even ‘claymation’ music videos are, I would argue, vastly more important to the true complexity of Tool. For a tiny snippet of context, the band’s first EP is named ‘Opiate’ and features tracks that can only be described as strange (and a little bit manic). The title track involves a story about Keenan and his friends on various drugs, which sets an instant mood for their image: weird. There are a lot of themes that encapsulate the band and their antics, drugs definitely being a large one. It is often said that deep listening combined with psychedelic substances open the mind to the deeper concepts that Keenan likes to write about, the big one being spirituality. Hell (no pun intended), even the artwork for 10,000 Days was created by artist Alex Grey after having a drug-fuelled experience in South America and hallucinating a net of, and I quote; ‘infinite God-heads’.



Tool's 10,000 Days album artwork, created by artist Alex Gray



In the latest album Keenan writes about the American justice system (The Pot), the loss of his mother (Wings 1 and 2) and challenges religion in nearly all of the other tracks, most notably Right in Two (my personal favourite). I think rather than banging on about how their music is complicated and difficult it would be worth paying attention to the life experiences of Keenan and how that is reflected in sonic form. In my opinion the complexity of Tool comes from their ability to portray emotion in sound and poetic lyricism. The biggest thing I’ve learnt about them is that we all need to stop taking them so seriously as they have come out themselves and said that they don’t. I mean for God’s sake, their first logo was an image of a wrench and two bolts either side and even their name is a euphemism.


If you have made it to the end of this post (or what I now realise is more of an essay) then I would strongly urge you to take off your rose tinted glasses and dismount your, so to speak, high-horse and give their top tracks another listen. Consider Keenan’s lyrics in relation to his experiences. Consider the creative choices and concepts that are included in their dragged-out, repetitive instrumentals and at least attempt to appreciate that their success goes deeper than drop D guitar tunings and long tracks.


What are your opinions on the band and their messages? Let me know on social media as I am genuinely interested to see why other people hold them in such high (or low) esteem and thanks for sticking with this as I know it has been a long one. I think I covered everything I want to but I would love to create a dialogue about this kind of thing over social media as it’s important to talk about music and meaning, and to get facts straight.


Further Reading:

MJK Episode of The Joe Rogan Experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J68gH5PiSZg

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