Tool, "Vicarious"

I’ve been listening to this song a lot lately, in anticipation of 10,000 Days’ May 2^nd release, and it is really growing on me. It opens with, essentially, the middle section from “Schism,” throws out a sufficiently hard-hitting 5/4 guitar riff, and culminates in the drum ending from “The Grudge.” It also, in its seven minutes, perfectly encapsulates the paradox that is Tool.

It’s easy to break down Tool songs and discover that they’re all assembled from the same basic components; a little time on a guitar tab website is all you need. To write your own Tool song, just tune your guitar to drop D, hammer away on the first few frets in some strange rhythm, and there you have it – a Tool riff! Then teach it to your friend, the bass player, and while he plays the riff, you can scribble some high, piercing, distorted guitar notes over the top of it; then come in with the riff yourself, along with the bass, kick on some extra distortion, and you’re well on your way to having your very own Tool song. Once you figure out a nice breakdown and hire a ridiculous drummer, you’ll be almost all the way there. But, the only problem is, your Tool song will suck. It will sound like some no-talent, junior high metal band who may as well be jumping up and down on their guitars instead of playing them. It will sound like you wrote a song by simply following the instructions I just laid out, and everyone will know it.

So one would understandably assume, then, that actual Tool songs suck as well; but they don’t. To the contrary, they are awesome. They are the sort of awesome that makes you run and grab a friend and proclaim, “Dude, check out how awesome this is!” And that is the paradox that is Tool. No band I can think of has done so much with so little. It helps that the singing and drumming is always amazing. (Although, Danny Carey has come a long way since Undertow.) But it’s hard to sit there, learning these riffs, and not imagine that your band could just as easily be Tool.

That Tool rarely deviates from their formula would seem to indicate some lack of talent, but I think instead that it indicates a wealth of talent. What other bands could get away with this? Not many. When U2 released How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, the consensus reaction was: “Hey, look, U2 rewrote All That You Can’t Leave Behind, but took out all the likeability.” When Tool releases a new album, though, we peel our faces off the concrete and ask, “What was that locomotive and how can I get onboard?”

Essentially, this is the spirit of rock and roll music. Much if it is imitative, almost none of it is very complicated, and yet it all seems fresh and new. When an album review mentions how so-and-so’s new single pinches its riff from this old song or that, it always makes me laugh. That new Weezer song doesn’t mimic a Cheap Trick song; it mimics thousands upon thousands of rock songs that have come before it. And it will itself be mimicked someday. Probably by Weezer. Probably on the very same album. The talent in rock and roll does not lie in writing original, complex music (although that is always nice), but in breathing life into the same old I-IV-V riff that Chuck Berry didn’t even invent.

And few bands do this as well as Tool. (And they don’t even use a lot of I-IV-V riffs; mostly it’s just I-II.)

So when 10,000 Days finally comes out, you will hear criticism that Tool songs all sound the same and that they just play the same riffs over and over. The source of this criticism, though, is not likely dissatisfaction with Tool’s music; rather, it is the feeling of being duped. I think a lot of Tool critics are just disappointed to analyze and deconstruct the songs and discover that the root elements are so basic and so recurring. Like pulling back the curtain to reveal that the wizard is really some fumbling old boob, it’s bound to cause a little disappointment. But, the trick is: the songs are great. If you at all like heavy rock music, it’s hard to listen to a Tool song and not a.) be impressed; b.) get pumped; and c.) want another. Tool does a very lot with a very little. And the key is the “lot.” That is what makes Tool so good. That is what makes their songs so great. And that is what makes the Tool song you just wrote so bad.