All right, let's talk about Tool

I really really hope Maynard didn't do what this person is accusing him of. Let's get that out of the way right now.

Tool--they've been with me since I was a kid. My cousin Nat recommended Undertow to me. I got it on CD. Then Ænima came out. Then ... Ænima ... came out. October, 1996. I was 14 years old. My friend Josh got it on CD. The cover moved--there were four different moveable images in the liner notes! The music was incredible! Then the music videos started coming out--did David Lynch take even MORE acid and direct these? IT'S THE GUITAR PLAYER WHO'S DOING IT ALL?!?!? I didn't have the money to get it immediately, but as soon as I saved up $20, I bought that fucker ASAP, from my local Manistee, Michigan record store, M&M Records. Owned by Jan.

BTW, Antichrist Superstar came out that same year. Two incredible albums in artistic rock, metal, and industrial, from two very different bands. What a great year for me! I was swimming in these two albums, so dense and worth exploring every inch.

I listened to Ænima every day for about 3 solid years before I took it out of daily rotation. The change from Undertow to Ænima was like, whoa, these guys have turned it around! From Undertow's already groundbreaking original tracks--like Intolerance, Sober, Prison Sex, 4 Degrees, the Henry Rollins-featuring Bottom, and the lengthy hidden track (track 69) with three distinct parts--to Ænima's sensitive, yet curse-laden, true prog rock tracks, dropping all the uncomfortable sexual innuendos of the previous album in favor of a look at psychedelics, relationships, human evolution, catharsis, continental destruction, mother nature, and including experimental filler tracks between almost every single song, the jump was incredible. Ænima was like a strange, wonderful movie that everyone can have their own version of--IN THEIR OWN MIND. No album conjures images as well as that one, for being a work of sound. Tool had crossed canyons between those two records.

Ænima is just a monster of a concept album, all of it centering around a Jungian fantasy of California breaking off from the continental United States. It was, in my humble opinion, one the best things that had ever happened in rock music, full stop. It rivaled and even topped Megadeth, Metallica, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Pantera, Ozzy, and all the best heavy bands of the time. Tool basically took the cock rock genre, and didn't kick it in the face and eviscerate its body or give it heroin, but gently set it aside in a cushy chair, gave it a Gameboy and a snack, and let it watch, as a child, what the adults in the real band were now ready to do. Tool is, above all, mature. A band for the intellectual in us all. They're consistently meditative, exploratory, and patient.

Their proceeding albums are less exciting. Tool were showing signs of having jumped the shark, as they basically repeated themselves in a less exciting fashion. Lateralus was great, and really stands alone as a fantastic album, but it's less explosive and exploratory than Ænima, and more easily palatable. Good for some fans, not for me. I like dissonance, weirdness. Lateralus wasn't weird enough for me, but does move me to tears--don't get me wrong. The title track is my fave.

10,000 Days is so boring. I just don't care. Chug chug in odd timings. The same Drop-D tuning from Adam and Justin, the same 1 - 3 - 5 Dm progressions in all the songs. It was getting old on Lateralus, and on 10,000 Days it's just annoying. Boring performances from Maynard, who sounds like he just doesn't want to be doing this anymore. It's almost like he's phoning it in. No hooks, no memorable passages. Danny does his best to make it exciting but he's up against brick walls. They had a pretty consistent 5-years-between-albums release schedule, with Ænima dropping in 1996, Lateralus in 2001, and 10,000 Days in 2006. You can almost hear how they were all getting bored, not feeling confident in themselves, running out of ideas, knowing it, and being rushed by the record company to deliver a product. That would make any album suck.

So now that it's 2018, 12 gosh darn years since their last album, and Tool's been saying they're working on the new album, and it'll come out this year! Fans are salivating. Then a few days ago Google tells the world that Tool released a new album! It's actually by Tool$, a hip hop artist. Funny. Everyone went crazy for about 5 seconds there. I woke up to that notification on my phone, and like everyone else, clicked on it and was like, 'Yeah that was too good to be true.' That's how I find out about it? Nah, Tool had better do something cool, like release it like Beyoncé drops albums. Put some thought and planning into it. Make it big and cool.

What I hope Tool does on their new record is this--drop the Drop-D tuning on the guitars, in favor of any other tuning. Could be standard, could be Open G, whatever. The point is that it would force Adam and Justin to come up with new tricks and new sounds when writing and performing. I want weirdness. I want dissonance. I want all those small experimental filler tracks between songs that help tell a story. I want to be surprised. I want Tool to do something out of their element. Above all, I don't want it to be the same old rehashed Dm Drop-D stuff! Change key signatures for once, jeez! I'd love to see some cool guest spots and features. Lyrics about new topics. I want it to be like Twin Peaks with a bunch of stuff I can't figure out right away, but really want to! I want mystery, intrigue! And darkness. Can't forget the darkness. Make it scary at some points. Hold the releases for key moments, and make them sparse. There, that's what Glenn wants. You're welcome.

Here's Tool's first demo, I just learned about it. Has some early versions of songs. Interesting to hear. It'll be great to hear the contrast between their new album and this one. One thing I loved about them as a beginning band was Maynard's tendency to be at once brutal, and soft with his singing, but more than that--his incendiary word choices. "If consequences dictate my course of action and it doesn't matter what's right, it's only wrong if you get caught, if consequences dictate my course of action, I should, I should play God and just ... SHOOT YOU MYSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLFFFFFFF"

That kind of incendiary, button-pushing attitude has been lost in Tool's few most recent albums, and I want it back! Fuck what people think, say what's on your mind, Maynard! Fuck it if people don't like it, stand behind what you say and mean it. That's what I want. No regard for what people like or don't like, what they want or don't want to hear. I want the truth from Tool--which means the truth from Maynard. I want Maynard's Truth .... haha that would be a good movie title.

Don't show me the boring old man who just sits in his vinyard in Ari-fucking-zona and shuns the world. I don't care about that man, honestly. He doesn't rock me.

Review: Trans Am, "Volume X"

The review: "Volume X" by Trans Am

img source: Thrill Jockey

The charge: it’s not Futureworld
Guilty parties: Phil Manley, Nathan Means, Sebastian Thomson

"Volume X" by Trans Am is not a concept piece. The boys compiled several unrelated songs they had been working on both remotely and during jam sessions. As such its sound is varied, and as a side note it would make a great party album.

"Volume X" thoroughly enjoys giving itself to you. In listening to it several times, I cannot think of a single instance during which I wanted to skip tracks. No part of "Volume X" is obnoxious, and at no point do the boys seem out of their practiced groove. They’ve been doing this a long time, and they don’t plan on calling it quits.

In my opinion, they’re only getting better. The 10th album by a 24-year-old band, "Volume X" is well polished. It probably doesn’t hurt that Manley is a professional recording engineer in San Francisco. If one learns new tricks and hones skills every time they make an album, then you know a Trans Am album is going to sound exactly the way the boys want it to, with good production and a full sound, utilizing minimalism, drones, and electronics, and jumping genres while still retaining that essential Trans Am feel of human machinery.

I’m gonna break it down track by track for you.

1st Track, “Anthropocene,” starts all angelic. Fades in really slowly. Then busts into this pretty sweet distorted bass riff with drums negating cymbals and hitting triplet beats on what sounds like six different toms. Sebastian Thomsen is a drumming wizard. He only hits that crash once in a great while here in “Anthropocene,” simply to signal the transition between chorus and verse.

Thomsen has always been my favorite member of Trans Am, and on this song he really shines. He’s every bit as talented as Danny Carey and Brann Dailor (who he toured with in Baroness while supporting Mastodon), but he takes on a more minimal style. He reminds me of Shellac’s Todd Trainer, and The Jesus Lizard’s Mac McNeilly—minimal, unhurried, yet rapid.

Also interesting about this song are the clean (though reverb-laden) vocals. Like, the guys actually had to sing and be on key without the help of a vocorder, the technique that made the song “Futureworld” sound so human-machine and beautiful. I don’t remember ever hearing a Trans Am song with pure human singing before “Anthropocene.”

2nd Track, “Reevaluations,” sounds like a bunch of mobsters in a room, reevaluating whether to put this snitch on ice.

“Show some patience…
Be in control…
If you don’t waste it… don’t you waste it… don’t you waste it.”

Now the guitar line in here has a real James-Brown-meets-The-Police feel. I say Brown because it’s really minimal, doing the same thing over and over to help retain the hypnotic feel. It also reminds me of an Eighties-Police guitar sound.

Suddenly the song opens up with a big major chord, but only for half a bar. Then it goes right back to that dark bass line. Then, what the heck is that, a Peter Frampton-style mouth-thing guitar solo? Pretty badass. A throwback to their TA album for sure.

This is a really sweet song, especially thru headphones. This album is badass. Trans Am have mastered their craft. They are Jedi.

Aw, you can hear some spontaneous in-studio laughter at the end! Sweet.

Oh man, and they USE IT TO TRANSITION SWEETLY TO THE NEXT TRACK!

3rd track, "Night Shift."
It’s a really uplifting, angelic source of synths, with bass and drum lines that don’t quite fit at first, but then come subtly into synch and the head bobbing unequivocally begins. It’s undeniable, the head bobbing influence of “Night Shift.”

That was so awesome, using the not-part-of-the-song laugh, which betrays, right there in plain English, how tongue-in-cheek these guys are sometimes, the laugh that suddenly lifts you up after that long menacing “Reevaluations,” and smoothly transitions into the positively lifting “Night Shift.”

But, the song gets boring quick, so they end it quick. Good choice, guys.

4th Track, “K Street,” has cool vocals. Vocorder, low and distorted. Low, droning, distorted bass. Drums processed and sounding sweet.

 “What’s your fucking problem?”

Fucking menacing. Like you’re walking thru Zozo on FF6. Holy crap, that was fast, we’re already into—

Track 5, “Backlash”
FUCK YEAH! Some thrash! I have never heard Trans Am be this metal! The drums are right on, totally mimicking Lars Ulrich! Clearly this excites me. That’s some good shit right there. There are two simultaneous vocal lines going on, one mixed to the left and another mixed to the right. Then a pretty legitimately sweet guitar solo! He’s not an expert, but he knows all the right moves to pull.

It fades out pretty quick. That was fucking badass. They don’t pull any punches with “Backlash.”

Track 6, “Ice Fortress,” begins with a circular, rising pattern. Begins a lot like “Night Shift,” with drums and bass fading in behind a solid keyboard line. This is a pretty even-keel, trance-y, jazzy number. Makes me feel warm. The mix is really warm. Stimulating. Good music to work to. Not distracting. Engaging. Really interesting how the guitar and drums are all working together near the end, with that big, large, giant bass worm monster crawling back and forth in the mix, like the big black worm at the end of Portal’s video for “Curtain.”

Track 7, “Failure,” begins with drums. Synths. Cool menacing bass line. We’re back on K Street, it seems. Same feeling. We’re in a gang and we’re trying to get something nasty done. But what? The boys give you a feeling of swirling down into the bad place with “Failure.” Very dark. Very dark. Rainy. You’re shaking your head no as the camera pans out and fades to black.

Track 8, “I’ll Never.” Now I’ve seen this video something like a million times.



It’s so amazing—a complete concept, a full marriage of sound and video, conceptually and narratively. It’s got a Twin Peaks feel. A throwback to the Fifties. Slow. Takes its time. In no hurry. Full of love. The vocals are processed, so they don’t sound human. And in the video it looks like it’s not even Nathan Means’s hand holding the mic. He’s absolutely still, like a mannequin.

Then he drinks water three times and it’s hilarious. I also love the woman in this video. She’ll never get over him, either.

“I’ll Never” is the most romantic journey I’ve yet heard Trans Am attempt. It was weird at first, but my three-year-old girl really likes it. She calls him The Red Man.

The one thing I don’t understand is the shot of trash at the end. It’s really quick. Is it as obvious a point as it seems? “This video is really just trash?”

Track 9, “Megastorm.” Now I watched the video for this song first, and it kind of fell flat. The mix is a little flat. But when I heard “Megastorm” thru headphones, it really hit me. The Megastorm. The fullness of those distorted bass sounds, the epic scales they’re playing, the slow, sci-fi doom-ness of it all. It’s a really beautiful concept. It reminds me a lot of the track “Black Matter” from their last album, 2010’s “Thing.”



You just want to do a creepy dance to this song! It’s fucking sweet!

This album is purely enjoyable. The boys put a lot of work into it, and at this point in their band life, they know which pitfalls to avoid, and how to sound polished before even going in. it’s really cool stuff, really clean, really pure. Really creative, too. Trans Am can keep rocking this sound forever, I don’t care. It’s like I say about Deftones—they keep exploring the same sound, and they somehow keep making it more beautiful!

Speaking of which—

Track 10, “Insufficiently Breathless.” What a beautiful piece. The video is good, too. The acoustic guitar line that starts it out is something so big and beautiful and clean, straight out of the Seventies, with Cat Stevens and Simon & Garfunkle, but featuring a better mix with the technology of today.



Oh man, and the rising part. In the video, he’s climbing the hill. It’s so peaceful, so introspective. So, “We made it.”

Then. Gets darker. You can hear the downtuned his guitar. The chords get more minor, but still explorative, still unchained, still reaching, exploring the spaces it creates. The man is walking into the water and the credits are rolling, leaving you to wonder where it is he’s going. I bet he’s headed straight into space. Probably transcending his mortal body.

And with these boys, that’s not a far-off bet.

Some other good reviews of Volume X to explore:
Thrill Jockey
TransWorld SKATEboarding
Fractured Air