I realised in the last week, I haven’t written anything about Tool since this blog started in 2013. And the reasons I could come up with is because their music didn’t exist digitally in any legal way for me to access and I really hate using YouTube, putting up with their ads and how I could come across a song with the audio quality being hit and miss. Plus since I pay for Spotify, I’m not interested to pay for YouTube. And even though I own a lot of vinyl and CD’s, I don’t play em anymore. And Tool, up until a few weeks ago, were a band that existed in the physical world.

So out of sight, out of mind.

And then Tool is suddenly back in.

And for a lot of people Tool is known as an “acquired taste”. Tool writes music that is progressive, but not a thousand notes style progressive. It’s elements are more about exploring and building grooves, some of them in 4/4 and others in 7/8, 6/8 and so forth. They have elements of styles known as rock and metal in there. Vocally, it is a bit harder to categorize. On the “Aenima” album, just check out “Stinkfist” and the lyric, “Elbow deep beyond the borderline”. I don’t recall too many bands who sell out arenas singing about fisting.

And people talk about the band and people come back for more and people pay more for their product. Because Tool is a unique artist. Most of the other artists in the major music markets are lumped into a few genres, while Tool lives without category, regardless of what the marketeers want from them.

Go left when everyone wants you to go right. Be the “none of the above” answer when everyone wants you to be part of the above.