Current Events > i listened to my first TOOL song today. Schism

(+) Yeah! (+)

holy shit i've heard of this band and this song but i never got around to listening to it.

would listen again

Yeah man. Tool's not like other bands.

When you're listening to Tool, just remember that they're not like other bands. Their music is incredibly artistic, almost to the point where you have to be paying complete attention to them to even remotely understand them. I remember listening to a song on Lateralus (though I can't remember what it was), where I thought a song was absolute bollocks during the listen. Then, I closed my eyes for a second, and all of a sudden the song had an entirely new meaning. It was insane the way Tool could just become something so different when you take a look into the music.

Another thing you should note about Tool is that it's easy to get a headache listening to them. Not because they're a bad band, but because of how many ideas their music is riddled with and how complex they are. Soon enough your head will fill to the brim and the rest will just sound like noise to you. Just turn it off and give it a listen the next day.

If you don't like the music, you'll definitely at least enjoy reading through the lyrics, and picking apart the song itself and all of the artistic values that go into making it the complexity that it is.

This should've been your first'un:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vc9Mz2tfHM

But how confident are you in whether or not the pieces fit?

Try The Pot next

i'm not awake enough for you to clown on me, guys.

Vokrent posted...

i'm not awake enough for you to clown on me, guys.

Youve much to learn, young tooligan

They're better live also

i spent a good portion of first year uni listening to Tool and playing Mechwarrior 4

On the one hand, Tool is very unique and has an instantly recognizable sound

On the other, so many of their songs feel like slight variations of each other to the point where you want them to mix it up a little

Now give the full album a go.

nima and Sober are my favorites

Rotterdammerung posted...

i spent a good portion of first year uni listening to Tool and playing Mechwarrior 4

For me, it was Quake 4. Specifically i have a very clear memory of listening to Schism during one of the tank piloting sections taking out those strogg spider walkers

Zombified_Toast posted...

For me, it was Quake 4. Specifically i have a very clear memory of listening to Schism during one of the tank piloting sections taking out those strogg spider walkers

Swamp Song and doing arena missions

Their music is Magical.

It took me a long time to get into and understand what all the admiration was about, but after I've finally broken into it...it's like their music is on an entirely different level. I started out on Aenima, I listened to it once, didn't get much out of it. Then I saw Escape from L.A., and the director John Carpenter uses the song "Sweat" to perfect effect in the film, and it just haunted me. I listened to Aenima again and it's like every time I listened to it, it eerily got better and better and became one of my favorite albums in a very short period of time.

Next I listened to Lateralus. Once again, didn't think much of it. Seemed like Tool was just experimental and overrated. Then listened to it again the next day... and it's like something unlocked in my mind overnight. The album was brilliant, amazing, and beautiful. It continued to get bigger and more incredible the more I listened to it. I've probably listened to it 50 times since then.

Yesterday, listened to 10,000 Days. Remember feeling disappointed that it was no Lateralus. Listened again today, and it's brilliant, haunting, and marvelous. Tool does something I've never heard before; It's like they're playing with the very properties of music to set up something you can't understand at first, then blow your mind with a musical idea that couldn't have been understood or expressed in just a few playthroughs. Their music engages you on a spiritual level and shows you things you didn't know existed. If you don't like Tool, it's not because they're "overrated" or not as good as you've heard, it's because you haven't been enlightened. The best way to listen to them is to accept that the music is excellent and you're in good hands musically. If you try to judge it like you do most music, it will prevent you from understanding.

TOOL is freaking sweet. listen to Lateralus, Invincible and Descending

Except for some of their popular songs I find them a little boring tbh. I'd rather listen to the first two A Perfect Circle albums.

I can't tell if people are being serious or making fun of Tool given how ridiculous their fanbase overrates them, but Tool is a very solid rock band.

Surprised people haven't listed Vicarious and Parabola and I'm pretty fond of Stinkfist too. Descending, Sober, and The Pot have been noted but are fantastic too.

Schism is kind of a terrible introduction.

Listen to the Undertow and nima albums first.

The definitive Tool top 5

1. Pushit (Salival version)
2. Descending
3. Third Eye (Salival version)
4. The Grudge
5. The Pot

Everyone else is wrong.

Ew

most overrated band back in the day.

EVeryone was obsessed with them.

Anyway "Schism" is a good song.

Flood is a great song

they do put on a really good show live, i got to see them once with 'obstructed view' seating (the view was not obstructed)

Prison Sex is still their best song. My favorite though is Hooker with a Penis.

Sorry, I mean Aenima was a great song. Flood is alright too though.

To me, Tool's Lateralus is the most amazing piece of music ever composed. I think Tool deliberately wanted to give their fans something truly amazing, but wanted them to find it on their own. "Recognize this as a holy gift..." At first, I thought that the song Lateralus was about tripping acid - discovering true color by seperating the body from the mind. At first listen, I imagined the bending envelope as an intense visual. After becoming more familiar with the track, however, I had reformed my interpretation to something broader: think deeper. Lateralus, perhaps because it is the album's "title track", serves as the central clue for a puzzle that a friend of mine had read about somewhere on the internet. "All I know is that there is a different order for the songs - something about two spirals. Oh yeah, and thirteen is in the middle." After scavenging through endless google search results, I gave up on finding more about this 'alternate order'. Intent to figure the album out, and very curious about the spirals - I put on the proverbial 'thinking cap'. I understood how the spirals could have a lot of significance, in that the album's title track offers the inspiring, "swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human..........And following our will and wind we may just go where no one's been. We'll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one's been." In my internet scavenging, I had read one review, written by a drummer, who mentioned that Danny Carey's drum beat formed a fibonacci sequence during the song Lateralus. A drummer myself, I decided to get out the graph paper and follow Danny. I can't play like he can, but at least I can hear everything he's doing, and thus was able to construct the drum tabulature. Sure enough, Danny repeats a Fibonacci sequence through the number 13: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13. After 13, he starts again with 1. Bringing in my Algebra 2 knowledge of the Fibonacci sequence, when the equation for the Fibonacci sequence (which I don't actually know) is graphed, it forms a sprial whose vertex depends on the number at which the sequence begins. Coincidence? I began to think not. I had already known of Danny's obsession with sacred geometry and am familiar with Bob Frissell's book, Nothing in This Book Is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are , so the significance of what I had stumbled upon had actually begun to settle in. This is where I just had to play with Lateralus. I had doodled a few spirals in the corners of my graph paper, and in doing so made the first important connection to Lateralus. I knew that if the tracks were in fact intended to be heard in a different order, "Parabol" and "Parabola" would have to go together. In drawing my spirals, I had begun with a vertex and 'spiraled' outwards. After writing the numbers 1 through 13 linearly, I could immediately see that Parabol and Parabola would have to be the middle of my spiral (in that 13 / 2 = 6.5). I drew a simple arrow between 6 and 7 and then pondered the next pair. At first, I actually drew a spiral connecting pairs of numbers whose sum equaled 13 (the number of songs on the album). This, however, left the last track in the same position and without anything to connect to. At this time, I had used my copy of Lateralus and Cool Edit Pro to take out the silences between tracks and put the songs in the following order: 6,7,5,8,4,9,3,10,2,11,1,12,13. The transition from Parabola into Schism blew my mind, as the plucks, probably dismissed by listeners as a drawn out rant of an ending, perfectly transition into the beginning of Schism. When you count out beats as the strings are plucked, Schism resumes with the same time signature and tempo - mirroring the progression of notes. The transition from Schism into Ticks & Leeches is equally intriguing. Schism ends with strong double-kick bass and tom smacks, and Ticks & Leeches begins with what many would call a 'tribal' drum beat. The beat at the very start of Ticks & Leeches is slightly different every subsequent time it is repeated - the measures are two beats longer. Yup - you guessed it - those two beats are ACTUALLY the last two beats of Schism. I can honestly say that I never understood the album's fourth track, Mantra until reordering the album's songs. What I had originally heard as whale calls now had begun to resemble the worst imaginable dry heaves - or a stylized choking. Fitting, seeing as how the last line in Ticks & Leeches is "I hope you choke." After this transition, none of those following it really seemed to make much sense. I certainly didn't like that Disposition and Reflection had been seperated - as they sound quite good when played sequentially on the album.

radical_rhino posted...

Prison Sex is still their best song. My favorite though is Hooker with a Penis.

I wish there was an album recording of prison sex with the extended bridge "thought I could make it end, thought I could wash the stains away, thought I could break the circle if I slip right into your skin, so sweet was your surrender, we have become one, I have become my terror, and you my precious lamb and martyr"

Dorfmann_ posted...

The definitive Tool top 5

1. Pushit (Salival version)
2. Descending
3. Third Eye (Salival version)
4. The Grudge
5. The Pot
Everyone else is wrong.

These are also some of my favorite songs, including H. (If you know how to play it on guitar/bass, the riffs are very similar to Pushit)

Every time I see/hear Tool fans talk about Tool, it reminds me of this:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/d1af394e.jpg

pinky0926 posted...

Another thing you should note about Tool is that it's easy to get a headache listening to them. Not because they're a bad band, but because of how many ideas their music is riddled with and how complex they are.

Come on. I appreciate Tool as much as anyone else, but this is just overly dramatic.

Excellent song and excellent band

MajesticFerret posted...

I can't tell if people are being serious or making fun of Tool given how ridiculous their fanbase overrates them, but Tool is a very solid rock band.

ItsNotA2Mer posted...

Come on. I appreciate Tool as much as anyone else, but this is just overly dramatic.

It's copypasta. It's impossible for them to be mentioned without people dragging out the old parodies of Tool fanatics.

So I guess only like two of us in this whole topic aren't making fun of TOOL fans lol

i feel better after my sleep.

i'll look at more of their music later. thanks for recs and not completely drowning the topic in copypastas

it's pretty much all downhill from schism

The Pot is fantastic imo

CSCA33 posted...

So I guess only like two of us in this whole topic aren't making fun of TOOL fans lol

Pretty sure Tool makes fun of their own fans. There's no way they can't.

Picking what album to start with depends what genre you favor - for more straightforward, aggressive metal, the earlier the album, the heavier. The albums get increasingly progressive and esoteric, with Aenima and Lateralus having the most noticeable elements of both. If you can listen to mostly filled out 80 minute CD in one sitting, the albums are best listened to in the intended sequence (which the band has not gone on record to my knowledge to verify the legitimacy of an alternative Lateralus track listing).

LoZguy709 posted...

Pretty sure Tool makes fun of their own fans. There's no way they can't.

Picking what album to start with depends what genre you favor - for more straightforward, aggressive metal, the earlier the album, the heavier. The albums get increasingly progressive and esoteric, with Aenima and Lateralus having the most noticeable elements of both. If you can listen to mostly filled out 80 minute CD in one sitting, the albums are best listened to in the intended sequence (which the band has not gone on record to my knowledge to verify the legitimacy of an alternative Lateralus track listing).

Another copy-pasta for the pile /-\

But did you know that the pieces fit, as you watched them tumble away?

kind9 posted...

Except for some of their popular songs I find them a little boring tbh. I'd rather listen to the first two A Perfect Circle albums.

That's whats great about music though, you can switch to a different sound in a second these days.