Tool is one of those bands you like when you're a teenager.

...but you love when you're an adult.

ZING!

Or maybe this post is april fools-ish.

I just went through some of infinitemusic's posts - I've always found him relentlessly negative. After 3 pages of drudgery, there was something mildly positive about Vic Chestnutt and Black Sabbath, a few comments about SY and otherwise exclusively negative comments. In that context, I laughed when I got to this post:


In response to Herr Death.

Obviously, I'm hardly captain enthusiasm, but I just wanted to point that out.

Oh, and incidentally, I can't abide Tool.

infinitemusic reminds me a lot of atari 2600.

Really? Atari was hysterical, and funny, and sometimes quite smart. None of which really applies to infinitemusic.

Oh, I just meant the negativity.

Atari was one of the darkest posters on the board.. I always imagined him as brooding away.

Yeah - I think Atari was more engaging because you at least knew that he was enthusiastic about a lot of things, and was pretty good at sharing torrents and so on. Nothing I was ever interested in, but that's hardly the point.

Adam Jones isn't brilliant at all.

a brilliant musician or musicians whose output sounds like TOOL is like a brilliant physicist who only works on how to make plastic bags for pooper scoopers

Thankfully, Adam has done much work outside of Tool. His guitar offerings via the Melvins have been outstanding. Especially on that Pigs of the Roman Empire record. Really wish Noiseland Arcade would release something (a side project featuring Adam and Buzz).

All of Maynard's side shit has been garbage. Even the stuff w/ Lustmord has sucked cat box.

ICP = dog beats
TOOL = dog shit



Did you hear that they're going to be in the next episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force?

Derek, I'm going to have to politely/respectfully disagree here. Adam Jones isn't a flashy guitarist, but he always knows exactly what to play for maximum emotional impact. A song like Eulogy has layers and layers of interesting little guitar things going on. He really is good at constructing some really well-made songs. I like his sense of restraint, very uncommon for a popular heavy rock act. The most talented guitarists know when not to play. Everything he plays is quite simple, but, well... that doesn't really matter (at the top of my head, every Joy Division song is easy as fuck, but it's all memorable).

I'll agree that there are a few too many dumb drop-d riffs, but 75% of System of a Down's self-titled album is the same way, and it still rocks. I see it more as Tool just playing down to their audience.

They're a creative, interesting little mainstream rock band. Aenima is probably better than 90% of SY's catalogue.

I'll leave this here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm2glu3WLGk

8-piece koto ensemble performance of "Lateralus"

tool are just crap

Aenima is good and lateralus is decent. I guess undertow is a good album. Don't like 10,000 days. I like puscifer best out if all Maynard's projects

I really think they're overrated. Puscifer is NOT funny, and brings to mind the most obscenely bad "look at me!" butt metal with its even more irritating take on the Primus "thing" ... Their videos are embarrassing to watch. I imagine they hit home with many a pimple faced Midwestern high school outcast, but hopefully those kids go on to discover Melvins, Rodan, Unwound, and other bands that make every project associated with Tool sound equally bland and sophomoric.

I think there are some interesting musical moments on Aenima, specifically "Jimmy" and "H" ... But I think the interesting things they managed to do were accidents. A Perfect Circle is SO AWFUL. That band sounded like a mashup of Incubus and Creed. And they really pock-marked a NIN show for me back in the day by boring the fuck out of me.

I see them as a relentlessly juvenile band that has squeaked by with some of the more "highbrow" music types by throwing bits and pieces of "artsy" experimentation and references to philosophy into their unbelievably tepid, Luke warm vanilla ass songs.

I don't mean to be a hater here. I've tried to be fair about the OK music they've released and not focus only on the complete and total shit, but I can't do it anymore. If I find myself feeling in the mood to listen to Aenima (which I was quite taken with when it first hit), all I'd have to do is think about the fact that the first song is called fucking "Stinkfist" and the urge would die. Took brings to mind high school boys ... The kind of high school boys who play bloody knuckles and like anything that's obscene. Like that goddamn wrench-penis Tool t-shirt. Ugh. Ughhhhh! So. Goddamn. Unfunny.

Who needs Took when you have Spiderland and Leaves Turn inside You and Rusty? Fuck Tool.

Oh, I forgot that Tool fans tend to be absolutely intolerant of anyone who doesn't love Tool. That's so charming.

Feel the wrath of my pale, acne-covered stare as I contemplate shooting you with my dad's hunting rifle!!! Beware the flecks of spit that are bound to shoot out from my braces as I curse you for not liking the almighty band that releases like one album a decade and refuses to die!!!

Hah!

Tool's a different kind of bad than Korn and Bizkit though. APC, with their Incubus like drums and vocals that makes me want to deafen myself, are more in that family of "kinda-heavy-rawk" ... Tool is the best of the related projects, but they're still utter shit. Just awful.

My girlfriend loves them :(

I like Tool just fine. I'm not a "fan." But I like them.

No disrespect to you or anyone else on the board who likes Tool.

I adore tool fuck yall..

Sometimes i honestly feel like Maynard lyrics reflect my actual brain

Also tool is a prototypical LA band and LA sound (so i might be biased too)

Eek!

Ack! The lyrics to the song commercially known as "Track 1" just sound kinda vaguely unsettling, but as soon as the word "Stinkfist" comes into my head, I'm just like... Awww, Jesus, fuck, way to capture the essence of unclassy, guys.

Got nothing on "Prison sex" though. Oh yeah baby, I've found some kind of temporary sanity in this shit blood and cum on my hands! That's some feel-good shit yo! And so subtle. Like an Alfred Hitchcock film about anal rape.

Just kidding it's like a Rob Zombie film about anal rape.

Ooh! White Zombie... There's a band that's probably better than Tool. :D

SFAD, I knew you and NR liked Tool, which is why I said the no disrespect thing. None to you guys anyway. Tons of disrespect to Tool. Like, gobs and gobs. But not you guys.

A friend once described them as "either the best band someone with bad taste likes or the worst band someone with good taste likes." That seems accurate.
I do not like their music at all (especially the vocals), but their drummer is good.
And I give them credit for taking weird bands on tour with them; bands that are guaranteed to alienate their fanbase to a large degree.
I personally know two bands who have been taken on tour with Tool (Cows and Kinski), and both said they were treated very well by the band and had great experiences with them.
How else would Cows get to play arenas?
They get some major points there, but it doesn't make their music any better...

Yes! That's an excellent way to describe the not-quite-100%-God-awful/not-quite-any-level-of-"good" four albums of music they've released over the past TWENTY-THREE YEARS


Yeah I can get behind them for giving Kinski some exposure. Kinski is a great band, and an especially kickass live band. I don't think their stint with Tool did much for them, really, as they're nowhere near a household name, and are relatively unknown even among fans of the post-rock genre.... But yeah, whatever. Thanks Tool.

Oh and thanks for Meshuggah too. Not really, that band was terrible. But I'm sure a lot of their rabid fans caught their rabies at Tool concerts in 2001.

I've heard them described as the "thinking man's metal band... almost certainly by people (critics) who know nothing about metal... but the phrase still stuck in my mind for some reason. I've also heard them compared to Metallica a number of times by a number of music writers. And when I think about it, Metallica around the time of ..And Justice for All is more deserving of that title. Their music was more intelligent and their technical prowess was undeniable.

But then they started to suck in a way that even Tool can't compete with, so whatever. I just don't even see Tool as a true metal band. They're butt prog. Like the foul mouthed American answer to Rush.

Re: thinking man's metal, I know 3 metal fans with PhDs and none of them like Tool. I think they're a bag of shite, but I have new respect for them now I know they took Cows on tour with them.

Amusing thread...

Haha! Well, there ya go then. Unless you're friends have PhDs in business admin., cause let's be honest - that would disqualify them.

Yeah. And Hooker with a Penis is one of those "ok" moments I was referring to. Musically anyway. Lyrically, it's a goddamn shitshow. I get the "I'm the man you're the man he's the man as well" line... clever enough... and yeah I hate it when people get all preachy about how so-and-so "sold out" just because they got some attention, or altered their sound a bit.

BUT those lyrics are just abismal. Dope Beastie tee? Nipple rings? OGT? Jesus Christ man, eat shit. Real cool guys don't care what douchebags think.

Also, I come from NIN stock. I know it's silly, but I always felt like there was kind of a competition between the two. They were roughly the same level of popularity and dealt in comparable if not truly similar kinds of dark brooding quasi-goth. But while Trent Reznor tempered his absurdity with ingenius compositions and a serious approach to crearing electronic music for the masses, Tool seemed to stagnate.

Guess that's why Trent Reznor is an Academy Award winning composer now, and Maynard is busy portraying "satirical" rednecks in Puscifer music videos, looking and acting like a giant fucking asswad.

Severian check out the lyrics on Lateralus or 10,000 Days... big improvement.

And sev you completely discredited yourself when you said Metallica is more thought provoking or talented than tool. I mean you ain't got to like a band, i frankly i can care less what you jaded music snobs think of me for sincerely LOVING tool.




But come off it Teddy Brosevelt, Metallica SUCKS major ball sweat. They're just Motley Crue of the Crue ever took themselves too seriously like Bono

Meh

And i totally respect your opinion i just disagree completely.

Just listened to Lateralus fuck you haters its an LA masterpiece. Don't act like your shit tastes in music don't stink, i have trawled the "what are you listening to" thread here looking for new musics and found many of yall listen to that electro pop crap. So meh

I'd rather listen to LCD system or Hot Chip than let Tool rape my earholes any day of the week motherfucker. ;)