Dirty Forums - TOOL

Heres some feedback so far.......

Live From The Front Line…
“10,000 days in the fire is long enough, you’re going home…” Holy fuck.
‘Wings for Marie’ is blowing my mind.
So the album just leaked about an hour ago. Earlier today at work I had read a post by someone claiming to be in Canada, who happened to work for a record store that just so happened to be getting two regional promotional copies of the album at some point later in the day. Everyone called bullshit.
Then about 75 minutes ago, the ToolNavy boards started to go crazy. One post: “The album has leaked.”
Banned. Moderators — who knows how many were recruited for the task this late in the game — jumping on the slightest mention of the album. People immediately attempted to talk in code in order to safely discuss what was starting to happen between computers across the globe. Banned. Banned. New threads blown to a million bites before a single fellow poster had even seen that it had been created.
Eventually nothing could be said. The last new thread I saw posted was titled “It’s eerily quiet around here…”, and the poster wondered aloud why no was was speaking to each other anymore.
Then the board became unviewable by non-members for the first time ever. Another major Tool board is destroyed by multiple login attempts somewhere in the states.
By now Tim had spent about 20 minutes scouring the net for the album — now completely without the aid of any Tool discussion boards posting links to it.
It first appeared on torrent sites requiring membership, but it continued to spread, exponentially picking up speed as it became available for the first time to a slightly lower caste of internet users. Then it was our turn. It came to us. Oh… this is interesting. Maynard is singing like a woman. Fuck. This is going to get ugly. Ugly fast. (That is if the boards ever even come back online — ever.)
TOOL has taken a page out of Radiohead’s book. Notice I’m capitalising them again. This is important.
This is not TOOL folks. At least not the TOOL you knew. Immediate questions spring to mind:
Is it crap? Is it the biggest flop in the history of music? One of the biggest disappointments of your life? Sure, there have been moments of genius so far, but they seem to be few and far between. The soundscape is just so different. It is then that the secrecy surrounding the album becomes clear. Visions — of Radiohead playing ‘Kid A’ on headphones to nervous music executives in the back of a moving van before its release — spring to mind.
Or rather is the genius hidden inside somewhere? Deep inside? A gem you have to dig at to get? Like all classic albums, they grow on you slowly. They have to in order to have longevity. You’re shocked at first. Saddened. Disappointed. This is not what you’ve been listening to for the past few years. This isn’t what you told yourself it would be like. Like the first time I listened to ‘Lateralus’. It wasn’t ‘Aenima’. Or the first time I listened to ‘Kid A’. This isn’t Radiohead. What’s going on here?
But then something changes along the way, and you begin to see the genius lurking just behind the growing pains the band just forced you through. The production becomes clear, the attempt to completely shatter what was expected finds weight — what was demanded by a public hungry for more of the same, hungry like few other music fans in the world, was tossed aside. Almost casually. The pressure. How do we respond? We don’t give them an album like the last one. We can’t. You can’t go backwards. You can’t give them a crappier version of the album they’ve fallen in love with over the years. It’s what 99% of bands out there do.
If you’re lucky enough to love a really great band, you’re given change. It is their ‘blues’ album — a blues album with a massive and constant atmospheric-soundtrack playing as a score to the sadness.
But wait. So which is it? Crap? Genius?
I wish I knew music well enough to tell you on the first listen — but I don’t.
It will take time. Time I look forward spending reacquainting myself with an old friend.
Which gives all you out there time to hear about things other than TOOL. You can rejoice now.