So I just listened to some of the recommended songs for the first time, and here are my thoughts, @TylersEclectic style.
Schism starts playing… Wow this is well recorded. Drums kick in… Wow I can actually feel the kickdrum in my chest. Why doesnt every recording do this??
So the music is palatable so far. It’s not like the first 10 seconds of Hamilton that grabbed me and never let go for the rest of life. But it’s something I can learn to enjoy (unlike Steely Dan stuff, which never quite won my interest).
And oh man the guitars actually BITE. Even the really loud and distortion heavy sections actually sound… Sharp. Not a muddy wall of sound.
Still that kick drum in my chest, wtf!
Switching to other songs, the feeling persists. I am starting to appreciate how vastly different each song can sound. Can we really pin them to a genre? Like one track is just straight up monk chanting that sounds nothing like Rock but so fantastically done.
Everything is just so spacious and clean! Guitars pluck and shred and bite when they’re supposed to. Drums slam. Cymbals ring on forever. Are those chimes? And was that a GONG??
All right I’m gonna have to do this Pink Floyd style. Go album by album right from the top. I think I’m gonna end up really loving this band.
Next write up I might change it up significantly, do something like Matt Corby from Australia. Lot of people will dig him, excellent musician and singer.
Can you provide some examples? Grainy sound is sometimes intentionally used for texture/character and sometimes can be mitigated with different equipment.
[Coming from a fan of noise pop/rock, to include Sonic Youth, The Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Sleigh Bells, etc.]
Yeah, that’s very much intentional and the guitar is indeed clipping as it’s being recorded. That’s heavy distortion from an overdrive or fuzz pedal. See the link below for guitar distortion playing demos.
Hard rock normally uses overloaded amps and pedals to clip (square off) natural audio sine waves. However, the playback of distorted guitars will be much harsher and more unpleasant with a heavily compressed source file (many MP3 and streaming files) or through speakers/headphones with an uneven or bright high end.
What is your listening chain? Source, DAC, amp, and headphone set?
I own HD-600s, and found improvement when going to a tube/hybrid playback amp. This results in a softer, rounder high end that’s easier on the ears. I also experienced dramatic improvement on the HD-600s when going to a balanced setup (e.g., Drop THX AAA 789 amp).
The history of hard rock is the history of intentional distortion. It started with The Kinks You Really Got Me (1964), where they poked holes in their speakers to increase the distortion:
I’m trying I’m trying. Rosson RAD-O connected to the Sabaj. Balanced, Hart cables. See I’m trying to be somewhat pretentious. Listening to Enema or whatever they called their second album. Eulogy wasn’t bad. Why do I keep thinking of them in the same path as YES (Fragile) or Genesis (The Lamb Lay Down on Broadway) and not prog rock bands like King Crimson that I saw in concert?
The word Ænima is a portmanteau of the words Enema and Anima.
An enema is a procedure of introducing liquids into the rectum and colon via the anus. Metaphorically, it could refer to a cleansing of another type, such as the nationwide purging described in this song.
The anima refers to one of two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind in Carl Jung’s school of analytical psychology. In the unconscious of the male, this archetype finds expression as a feminine inner personality: anima; equivalently, in the unconscious of the female it is expressed as a masculine inner personality: animus. It is an archetype of the collective unconscious and it is said to manifest itself by appearing in dreams. It also influences a man’s interactions with women and his attitudes toward them and vice versa for females and the animus.
You know that I was being deliberate. And perhaps it’s a portmanteau of Enema and Anemia…
I switched to listening to Lark’s Tongues in Aspic the remaster version which sounds remarkably like what King Crimson sounded like in concert. I really like the kalimba and other little bell sounds in it.
I just don’t think that I’m ever going to like Tool. Or find out what happened to my 30 inch bamboo bong that I left in my closet at the P@M’s 45 years ago.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Industrial rock/metal isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I like all of their releases except the latest (sounds like a studio jam session rather than a well composed album), but I honestly think Tool is overrated as a band on the whole; specifically compared to bands that never made it into the mainstream and are for more talented. Musical tastes will always vary, so to each their own.
I consider myself a Tool fan but except Fear Inoculum, I can’t really digest any of the older albums from start to finish. I have my favorite songs and I listen to them. I venture into the lesser known songs but usually they are hit or miss (mostly miss) for me. I have tried introducing Tool to some buddies who like Prog rock but have had mixed reactions so definitely not a universally liked band.
Although if you play bass or electric guitar, they have some really cool and unusual rhythms which is pretty cool and probably is what draws me to them so much. It is also probably what might push some people away since it makes head bobbing hard with non standard rhythms.
TOOL was often compared to a floating, aimless jam band in their early days. IMO they’d be as forgotten as The Toll if not for their breakout claymation video for “Sober”:
It was a niche hit back in 1993.
The Toll was a 1988 one-major-label-album band. They are most famous for the 10 minute long story song “Jonathan Toledo.” They lyrics address Native Americans, White men’s offenses, and a guy named Jonathan Toledo. It cracked me up and left me speechless, as it captures super duper earnest 1980s social justice sensibilities.
TOOL had a great early video. I see their success as matching Ah-Ha’s “Take On Me” – both careers built on videos.
