walking upstream…
Tool
sourcesMix · Guitar World · Fourtheye
Formed in Los Angeles in 1990 around vocalist Maynard James Keenan and guitarist Adam Jones, Tool builds intricate, odd-metered rock architecture - Undertow, Ænima, Lateralus, 10,000 Days, Fear Inoculum - designed for headphone attention and patience rather than radio play. Danny Carey's polyrhythmic drumming and Justin Chancellor's serpentine bass lines turn progressive-rock ambition into arena-scale heaviness, while Jones's Grammy-winning stop-motion videos and Keenan's guarded, ritualistic stage presence gave the band an unusual mystique for a platinum-selling metal act. Famously deliberate - thirteen years passed between 10,000 Days and Fear Inoculum - Tool also held its entire catalog off streaming services and off YouTube until 2019, an anomaly among bands of its commercial scale.
the sound in question
1996
ÆnemaTool
walk the tributaries ↓
King Crimson1970s · Progressive rock / Art rock / Experimental rock
Danny Carey has said that hearing King Crimson's 1981 album Discipline on its release "revolutionized" his thinking about polyrhythms and the balance between instruments, and Tool named King Crimson (alongside the Melvins and Peter Gabriel) as a defining influence as early as a 1997 Alternative Press profile. Keenan has been even blunter about it, joking on a joint 2001 tour that "now you know who we ripped off" and crediting Crimson's music with a rigor the band tried to match while adding more emotional exposure.
listen: upstream & heresource: Tool (band) - Wikipedia ↗
1981
DisciplineKing Crimson
2001
SchismTool
listen forThe way clean guitar, bass, and drums each loop a separate pattern that phases against the others instead of locking to one simple backbeat - listen for how Schism's shifting 5/8-and-7/8 meter never settles into a predictable pulse, the same interlocking-parts trick Crimson's Discipline-era lineup built its sound around.
Black Sabbath1970s · Heavy metal / Hard rock
Adam Jones has repeatedly named Tony Iommi as a foundational guitar influence, describing Black Sabbath's music as something that "scared the shit out of me" the first time he heard it and gave him the same feeling as loving horror movies. Jones is explicit that his own drop-tuned riffing comes directly from studying Iommi's tone and phrasing, saying flatly, "if you don't hear it in Tool, you probably aren't really into Black Sabbath."
listen: upstream & heresource: Guitar World ↗
1970
ParanoidBlack Sabbath
1993
SoberTool
listen forThe plodding, minor-key riff and doom-laden low-string bends under Sober's verses - the same slow, downtuned menace Iommi pioneered on Paranoid, stripped of blues-rock swing and left to sit heavy.
Melvins1990s · Sludge metal / Noise rock / Stoner rock
Wikipedia's summary of Tool's press history singles out the Melvins as a shared touchstone: Adam Jones has named Buzz Osborne among his biggest guitar influences, and the connection runs past listening into collaboration - King Buzzo played second guitar on Tool's live recording of "You Lied," included on the 2000 box set Salival, and the two camps toured together (including an Australian run with the Melvins opening for Tool in 2002).
listen: upstream & heresource: Tool (band) - Wikipedia ↗
1991
BorisMelvins
1993
Prison SexTool
listen forThe lurching tempo drops and dissonant, start-stop riff structure of Prison Sex - a refusal of conventional verse-chorus momentum that owes more to the Melvins' sludge-slowed hardcore than to any straightforward metal or prog forebear.