Tool Band • Page 18

Paiste Colorsound 900 Ride Cymbal Purple

 

Getting to listen to new Danny Carey drumming might be the thing I'm most excited about.

 

Isn’t he in that new supergroup? The Seagullmen?

 

Yeah and the album was predictably not worth anything more than one casual listen.

 

x 2

 

Just saying. Haven’t heard it

 

Could not agree more. I had a long commute today and listened to Aenema, Lateralus and 10000 Days front to back. His drumming is unbelievable and elevates what are pretty repetitive guitar/bass sections and makes them sound so unique. Even more hyped for this album now.

I wonder what the packaging is going to be this go around. Alex Grey is just going to deliver each purchase at this point

 

That pic looks like an engineer’s hell

 

Danny and Maynard are both gods at their respective "instruments" -- like best of their generation level. It's just unbelievable to get both of them in the same band. The other two guys are obviously quite talented, too, and it sounds like they pull their weight during the songwriting process.

 

What's funny to me is that Adam's riffs are pretty basic and he rehashes a lot of them by slightly moving some notes around here and there but they work so well with the time signatures and overall sound. I couldn't imagine them any other way.

 

I wonder if they will ever play “Ticks & Leeches” live again. Haven’t they only played it once or twice? What an incredible song.

 

The First time I ever saw them they played it back at Ozzfest 02. That set made me a fan of the band and I went out and bought Lateralus and Ænema the next week.

 

I remember reading that it was too much on Maynard's vocals to perform live.

 

feel like the bassist does a lot of work in tool songs

i imagine "ticks" live would be similar to when the smashing pumpkins did "tales of scorched earth" live and billy corgan lost his voice for like a week (story may be apocryphal, i remember reading about it... more than a decade ago)

 

Oh yeah Justin is an amazing bassist. His usage of the whammy pedal makes the coolest sounds lol

 

He gets the best tones out of his bass. The harmonics on Disposition? I mean come on.

 

he’s been one of the best bassists alive for 20 years

 

This is gonna sound silly. I've only ever cried during a few songs, but I shit you not I teared up when the bass kicks in at the 1:03 mark the first time I listened to Jambi. So beautiful, but so simple.

 

The breakdown on that song still hits so hard.

 

I love recording drums tbh there's so many possibilities and methods, it'd be fun to play around with a ton of different mics and set ups with a big set like that. Some engineers hate drums tho lol

 

You're under selling Adam TBH he's absolutely incredible

 

I am underselling him, and he is great, but his riffs aren't overly inventive. He generally sticks to the same basic scales and chords. And like I mentioned, some of the riffs are nearly the same on multiple songs. The intro to Vicarious and the verses to H are nearly identical. The same for the main riff of 46 & 2 and the breakdown riff during Right In Two. Another one is the intro riff to Pushit and the lines he plays after the bass/electronic drums break in Intension. During each of these examples, there's a slight variation to the riff but they're undeniably very similar.

BUT this doesn't bother me for several reasons. For one, they are always playing in such ridiculous time signatures that anything more complicated than what he typically plays would be too much. With some notable exceptions (all of Undertow, Parabola, Jambi) the guitar is never really the focus anyways. Secondly, what he does is perfect for the band's sound. It's not flashy but it's not vanilla. There would no Tool without him (or any of them really). Tool isn't a guitar-centric band.

I meant no slight to him, I more or less meant that there's nothing overly technical or creative about his riffs. But that's not what Tool is about anyways, and what he does is perfect.

Also he brings us those sick music videos and that alone is worth it lol

 

I think what was just described above is more a testament to how 10,000 Days was a significant backslide in innovation, compared to its predecessors. As soon as it leaked, my most coherent impression was that it sounded like a mish-mash of their existing catalog at the time -- that's not something you could say AT ALL about any of the first three records. They were all quantum leaps forward that almost sounded like a whole new band.

What I will say about Adam is that, on the balance of being interesting rhythmically vs. melodically, the meat of his riffs tend to be pretty far on the rhythmic side. Almost their whole catalog is in the same two keys, and any adventurous or unconventional melodic stuff is usually coming from Maynard. I think the best summary was given by agent above: they really aren't a guitar-centric band.

 

i think 10,000 days poked at some uncharted space for the band, especially when the songs built out of or crumbled back into ambience ("wings for marie" and title track imo) or felt incredibly, inextricably knotted, moreso than any track on lateralus ("jambi"). "vicarious" and "the pot" are catchy and fun and pretty unnecessary at the same time idk. "right in two" is still one of my favorite tool songs, "rosetta stoned" one of my least favorite. it's a weird record to grapple with

 

Only song I don’t like on 10,000 Days is the closer. I even like Lost Keys, and love Rosetta Stoned