Los Angeles, CA · prog-metal · progressive metal · alternative metal · alt-metal

Tool

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Prog-metal's cathedral builders — polyrhythms, lasers, and total audience surrender, Danny Carey's drumming alone worth the pilgrimage.

Tool came together in Los Angeles in 1990 after Maynard James Keenan, who had studied visual arts and was working as a pet-store remodeler, met guitarist Adam Jones through a mutual friend in 1989. Drummer Danny Carey, who lived above Keenan and had been introduced to Jones by Tom Morello, joined soon after, with Paul D'Amour completing the original lineup on bass.

Signed to Zoo Entertainment, the band released the EP Opiate in 1992 and its debut album, Undertow, in 1993, both showing a fairly direct heavy metal sound. Justin Chancellor replaced D'Amour on bass in 1995, and the following year's Ænima pushed the band toward the denser, more experimental style that came to define it.

Their music combines heavy, low-tuned guitar with shifting time signatures and long, sectional song structures, often stretching well past ten minutes. Lateralus (2001) and 10,000 Days (2006) extended that approach, followed by Fear Inoculum in 2019, released after the band had already sold more than 13 million albums in the US.

The band's albums are released at long intervals and have consistently reached a large audience despite little conventional promotion; Tool has also won four Grammy Awards. Their visual identity is closely tied to Jones's stop-motion animation and artwork, and live shows favour dense lighting and projections over stage patter, with Keenan usually positioned toward the rear of the stage.

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