What time is it???
It’s poon time.
Just because the Dr nails it on the head I thought this would be the perfect place to re-paste his awesome Tool review…
Tool’s 10,000 Days by Dr. David Thorpe
I really shot myself in the foot with last year’s Mars Volta album review. In case you missed it, I made the mistake of listening to the damn thing. The post-traumatic shockwaves of extended noise passages and cockeyed guitar solos and songs called “Snyrf the Volpen Piss’t” are still ringing in my ears. The worst part, though, is that it set a precedent; whenever some high-profile nerd-rock album comes out, people expect me to listen to it.
As soon as there were grim whispers that a new Tool album was impending, I started to get all sorts of e-mails demanding that I write a review of it. And now, here it is: 10,000 Days, which could refer to just about anything. Some guesses:
“Fool”?
-The combined man-hours involved in designing the album’s packaging.
-How long the album seems (to me).
-The average age at which a male Tool fan loses his virginity, if manual stimulation by a 15-year-old girl in the back of a movie theater showing Saw II counts.
-It’s not funny, Maynard’s mom had a STROKE and she was PARALYZED for 10,000 Days, you prick!
-The number of days it will take me to wade through the e-mails calling me a prick for making fun of Maynard’s mom having a stroke.
Once upon a time, I lived for the simple pleasure of not having to listen to Tool albums. Those days are over, I’m afraid. I know that if were to I let this Tool album slip by without telling my soft-headed readers why they shouldn’t be listening to it, half of them would buy it and let it corrupt their delicate brains, and the slightly smarter half would crucify me for failing in my solemn duty to protect humanity from smarty-pants prog-metal.
I’m not sure I can stomach the prospect of picking over a whole Tool album today, or ever. More importantly, I don’t think this world needs any more Tool-related discourse, since message board discussion of the hidden meaning of every last nugget of cryptic poesy and superfluous plopping noise currently accounts for 75% of the Internet’s traffic. But lo, I must comment, for it is my job.
What can I say about 10,000 Days, really? It sounds exactly and precisely like a Tool album. They might as well have not have released it at all, because anyone who’s ever heard Tool could simply imagine what a new Tool album would sound like, and this is exactly what they’d imagine. We’ve got Maynard’s trademarked wacky frontloaded cadence that makes him sound like he’s gasping out words between pauses in getting beaten up (vi oomph cari oomph ous oomph ly oomph I…). Only in “The Pot” does he break out of his well-trod habits and surprise/embarrass us with some little-brotherly falsetto mewling. We’ve got Danny Carey’s (or is it Dana Carvey? I always mix those two up. Both are drummers, you know) inscrutable poly-molly-wooly-rhythms and tiresome bass drum wank-rolls that sound like a finger stuck in a fan (but, somehow, it’s music!).
As always, the affair is shabbily held together by the guitar work of Adam Jones, which manages to touch all the extremes of mediocrity, from the chilling abyss of conspicuous sub-mediocrity (the spit-soaked Frampton-Comes-Alive solo on “Jambi”) to the thrilling stratosphere of… defensibility. Yes, that’s about the best that could be said of him: someone somewhere might have some kind of argument in his favor. Lord knows it isn’t me. His ass is frequently saved by the workmanlike bass twiddling of What’s-His-Face, who charitably wrests the lead from Jones when the going gets too tough.
I may mention the general tunelessness of recent Tool songs, but I’ve already predicted the result: “Yeah, ‘Doctor’ Thorpe, you try coming up with a tune in a song written in 6.35/12/3 time! Tool is too complicated for tunes!” Yes, what a plebeian I am, shackled to the concept of melody, unwilling to see the genius of Tool’s usage of lofty concepts such as lengthy meandering and endless shuffling guitar scratchings. Sure, getting a good song stuck in your head is fun and humming a tune is a nice sometimes, and thank heavens we have Maynard around to test out some semi-melodic little vocal figures over the bubbling squall of bass shit, but the real future of music lies in the total death of melody. I’ll admit, after hearing “Jambi” a few times I woke up humming the sound of an old man trying to start up a recalcitrant 1962 Ford Falcon Club Wagon on an icy winter day. Chugga chugga chug.
For what it’s worth, the lyrics seem to be a bit less elliptical this time around, while still giving the trainspotting numerologist jerk-off Tool-nerd (and that accounts for 100% of Tool fans) something to chew on. First up, “Vicarious”: a Dateline Special Report on violence in the news media featuring guest commentator Maynard James Keenan. Excellent! I’ve been hoping to hear Maynard weigh in on the hottest issue of 1990. Maynard remains ambivalent! Ambivalent equals edgy! Oh Maynard, you’ve wowed me again with your no-bullshit worldview. “Jambi,” of course, is about the genie on Pee Wee’s Playhouse. That’s as much thought as I’m going to put into it, because putting thought into interpreting Tool songs is something that you people do, not me. The album’s titular track is “10,000 Days: Wings Part 2,” in which he talks about his mother’s death and that ain’t nothing to fuck with, so I’m leaving it alone (but the song sucks, yo). Rosetta Stoned manages to sneak in some of Tool’s beloved po-faced scatological humor amid a tale of some loser who does too many drugs and thinks for a split second that his life has meaning, but then it escapes his addled mind (sound familiar, Tool fans?). And so forth.
But what really fascinates me about Tool albums is the filler. While Tool has rarely been as audacious with their time-wasters as a band like The Mars Volta, they have been known to fall on the indulgent side. Their die-hard fans might claim that each and every track on the album serves its purpose and generates the distinctive “flow” of a Tool record.Yes, we can’t have too much of a tour-de-force. If every song on the album were worthwhile, the album would simply be too much, and we wouldn’t be able to concentrate. A fillerless Tool album would be an embarrassment of riches! Ladies would swoon!
Particularly impressed was I with “Lipan Conjuring,” which was so thoughtful an addition to the album that I feel as if it were included just for me. You see, I went to the record store with only fifteen dollars in my pocket, and I had a devil of a time deciding between 10,000 Days and Native Moods: A Pathway to Peace. On one hand, I love rockin’ out to some ten-minute chugging shuffles, but there’s another part of my soul that craves the inner harmony that can only be brought on from some high-quality chanting. It was with a heavy heart that I left the store carrying only one of these two things— or so I thought! Imagine my immense pleasure when my hard rock album was interrupted— no, that’s too harsh a word— when my hard rock album was magnificently bolstered by exactly the sort of stupid fucking crap I might hear on some grocery store counter impulse buy CD of New Age chanting bullshit! Bravo! I can have my cake and eat it too, and while I eat my cake I can listen to some total crap!
Ah, and “Viginti Tres” was a similar breath of fresh air, or perhaps quite the opposite. I haven’t been to the dentist in quite a while, and I was starting to get nervous about my lack of preventive dental care. Leave it to Tool to put my mind at ease by including the sound of that dental vacuum suction device on the end of their album! It feels like the spit is getting sucked out of my head even as I listen to it! And it even builds to a calming crescendo of tooth-drilling agony, just like a real visit to the ol’ sadist. This is not to mention the three-minute intro to Rosetta Stoned; that clearly doesn’t count as filler, since it’s an integral part of the song, right? I mean, you might ask “what could possibly make an already lengthy and overwrought song even better?” Obviously, the answer is to make the sum’bitch longer! Just slap on a vacuous three minutes of guitar feedback and a couple of menacing chords, and voila: epic.
Well, now that you’ve put that in your collective pipes and smoked it, I hope you continue to have fun nitpicking the meanings of various Tool songs on message boards for the rest of your miserable lives, or until Maynard finally dries out and crumbles like the lanky baked clay sculpture of a buzzard he is.
If reading a negative review of a Tool album in a feature called “Your Band Sucks” on a comedy website has raised your dander to unacceptable levels, you can always be a big giant fucking dimwit and send an angry e-mail to davidthorpe@somethingawful.com. Due to my complicated system of e-mail filters, all messages not bearing the subject line “I AM WRITING AN ANGRY LETTER TO A COMEDY WEBSITE” will be deleted.
- Dr. David Thorpe
Famed singer/beatnik Maynard G. Keenan
Tool’s revolutionary new packaging.
So if you take those three songs off and just put the combined track, that makes the record 10 minutes shorter and that much cooler.
what a cool idea and a pretty decent song. you think the band planned this or some super tool geek stumbled on it unbeknownst to anyone.
Late,
grmpysmrf
How about you take ALL the songs off it and replace it with a bunch of Megadeth songs? Then it would be REALLY cool!
Amlux, you should probably tell us if you’re being sarcastic here, because based on previous teenage emo outbursts, I’m prone to believe you’re dead serious . . .
What an attention seeking, petty minded fuckwit you are. Someone makes an offhanded comment about you (and on a discussion forum of all places!!!) and off you go all higgeldy piggedly waving your ego flag around as if someone died and made you President Of Cyberland Kingdom.
What a douchebag flake!!!
Then you have to off backtracking the message board to “dig up dirt” on me (so to speak) and scream HEY GUYS I WAS RIGHT ABOUT HIM ALL ALONG!! AREN’T I ACE!! to further consolidate your imagined cult hero status here.
What a fucking HEEB!!
Insted of just going “Yeah, right back at ya bud!” as most forum members would probably do, you have to flex your authoritarian, geek muscles and write a 10 page thesis slagging me off to high heaven. Are you on some self motiviated moralistic ego crusade to prove your worth online? Are you really that shallow and insecure in the real world that the only outlet you have after taking a beating at the office all day is to crucify anyone bold enough to stand up to you or make a fun, harmless jibe at you on a message forum? Is life really that bad for you, chump? I know it is for our resident loser school teacher here, but is it for you?
I know you get a kick out of posting your family snapshots or boasting about your shitty (nay, EMBARRASSING) taste in music to anyone who gives a fuck (namely yourself and MAYBE Akbar). That worthless piece of self promotion may have seemed like a good idea the first time round, but doesn’t the thrill wear a little thin after 327 photos and approximately 27 typed pages of self deluded personal garbage?
I’d be embarrassed.
Anyway, honestly who cares if you don’t like Tool? Who cares if you don’t get them? I know Grmpysmrf doesn’t - I mean the guy professes to be a “teacher” and yet seems almost incapable of putting together a coherent sentence. Maybe the two of you could get together - heaven knows, with the combined input of your bite sized IQs you sould be able to come up with a response that is semi decent!
Pretty sure Tool doesn’t need a flamewad like your own good self as a fan.
Anyway, have fun listening to Megadeth! Take a photo of yourself while you’re doing it too! We’re all SO interested to find out how it went, Fuckstick.
Oh…and Grmpysmrf - dude, you are one of a kind! Ha! One of a fucking kind. Have fun formulating a response ol buddy. I’m sure you’ll win! You’re a born winner.
What an attention seeking, petty minded fuckwit you are. Someone makes an offhanded comment about you (and on a discussion forum of all places!!!) and off you go all higgeldy piggedly waving your ego flag around as if someone died and made you President Of Cyberland Kingdom.
“Weee weee weee all the way home,” goes the little piggy. I love how when someone starts a fight and then after losing miserably accuses the victor of overreacting. What a baby.
I’m not the President of Cyberland. But I do OWN your little crybaby ass.
What a douchebag flake!!!
Then you have to off backtracking the message board to “dig up dirt” on me (so to speak) and scream HEY GUYS I WAS RIGHT ABOUT HIM ALL ALONG!! AREN’T I ACE!! to further consolidate your imagined cult hero status here.
I wasn’t diggin’ up dirt, Sally. I just remembered you praising Chinese Democracy and I also remembered you crying like an emo baby when Al was being a schmuck in some magazine interview (I even made a Prongs CoMiXXX for it). If you’re gonna call someone out on something, I just think you should make sure you’re not guilty of the same thing or you look like a little priss.
Here, just in case you missed it the first time (this is called shameless product placement for you marketing buffs) . . .
What a fucking HEEB!!
Sorry, Toots. I ain’t know Heeb. Say it loud. I’m black and I’m proud!
Insted of just going “Yeah, right back at ya bud!” as most forum members would probably do, you have to flex your authoritarian, geek muscles and write a 10 page thesis slagging me off to high heaven.
I’m so sorry, Little Girl. I’ll ask you next time what my response is supposed to be when next time you have the bad judgment to try to insult me.
I’m not sure how things work in the land of Vegemite and Wallaroos, but in America we have a little thing called Freedom of Speech. I guess I take it for granted sometimes.
Is life really that bad for you, chump? I know it is for our resident loser school teacher here, but is it for you?
Yes. My life is a spectacular failure.
Thank you for being the one thing more pathetic than me so that I can finally feel good about myself. I may have a crappy life, but at least I’m not you. Wheewww, that DID feel good. Thanks, Lucy!
Anyway, honestly who cares if you don’t like Tool? Who cares if you don’t get them?
You do. That’s why we’re having this conversation. In addition to being a whiny crybaby you also seem to have no short-term memory to speak of. Lay off the weed, Kiddo! I know it makes Tool more listenable if you’re stoned out of your mind, but it’s really taking a toll on the 'ol noodle.
Pretty sure Tool doesn’t need a flamewad like your own good self as a fan.
Then why are you crying about it? Go change your diaper and talk to someone who cares. I honestly couldn’t care less about Maynard, Tool, Chinese Democracy, Eminem, Linkin Park, or anything else you hold near and dear to your heart.
Anyway, have fun listening to Megadeth! Take a photo of yourself while you’re doing it too! We’re all SO interested to find out how it went, Fuckstick.
Okay, then. Here’s me and some random little Asian kid at the Megadeth show 2 years ago. They played “Rust in Piece” in its entirety. It was amazing.
Crap. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean all that. What I meant to say was, “Right back at you, Bud!”
Wimp.
Geddy Lee is a modern day Geddy Lee.
Geddy Lee is a modern day warrior, today’s Tom Sawyer.
I think this seems fitting here, inside an MJK thread, maybe Tool, can even play this before their show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBdzQxVWnVU
great thread
Are you really that shallow and insecure in the real world that the only outlet you have after taking a beating at the office all day is to crucify anyone bold enough to stand up to you or make a fun, harmless jibe at you on a message forum?
Wot the. fuk ez goi ng onin, oztralia thit!!! all of the ozzy frum meembers feeel thu neeed tew projekt; avery snigle negatif things en thereses lifes on twoo uther meembers.
]Is life really that bad for you, chump? I know it is for our resident loser school teacher here, but is it for you?
Dnut spoke,. fer me. mE lif es gooodly.
replyI know you get a kick out of posting your family snapshots or boasting about your shitty (nay, iEMBARRASSING) taste in music to anyone
uses thu ones that doos thu boosting abit shirty mooosic wut iz/?“iEMBARRASSING”, meening.
approximately 27 typed pages of self deluded personal garbage?
tew col gunnars persinel stuff garbedge es not nise, you bad little person. yew ar angree and not nise. and yer not nise tew.
I’d be embarrassed.
yew shood be thin agane yew ar thu wun that toald everee one yew wir australianshoulda cept tht tew yerself
I know Grmpysmrf doesn’t - I mean the guy professes to be a “teacher” and yet seems almost incapable of putting together a coherent sentence.
that’es nota tru. mi sen ten says. are purrfect?
Dum ozzsreela boy. me wryting ez lazee but y3w wood neeed sum won tow tel yew wear. my, grammer iz; pore. you woood never bee, a bell tew spot it on yore oan dumshit… tok a bowt a looser [rolleyes]
Maybe the two of you could get together - heaven knows, with the combined input of your bite sized IQs you sould be able to come up with a response that is semi decent!
yew, seam angree. yew shud calm down. it just is just a inretnerts mesage bored
Pretty sure Tool doesn’t need a flamewad like your own good self as a fan.
yew meen yer nnot cumpletly sher 'but yore prety sher. as a uber tule fan shudn,t yew bee a bell tew tel that rite a way…
Oh…and Grmpysmrf - dude, you are one of a kind! Ha! One of a fucking kind. Have fun formulating a response ol buddy. I’m sure you’ll win! You’re a born winner.
me iz winner speecialee over no comptititon. but yew werty oppononyt not reely but yew tri. now me iz meen won but me is winner over yew all time the.
laet!
gmPryrfsm
I think this seems fitting here, inside an MJK thread, maybe Tool, can even play this before their show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBdzQxVWnVU
I hadn’t seen that one. Thanks! It looks amazing.
[url http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=2iDBmncDeqw&NR=1] Dwayne stomp from black tooth is hysterical
Late,
grmpysmrf
I love this fuckin’ place.
I want to sex the blue bikini girl from 1985.
Okay, then. Here’s me and some random little Asian kid at the Megadeth show 2 years ago. They played “Rust in Piece” in its entirety. It was amazing.
This is the Maynard James Keenan thread, in case you didn’t notice, Pretty Boy - not the Post Pictures Of Yourself Posing With People You Have Slept With thread.
You’re just as fucking stupid as the other ignorant grunt here.
Do us all a favour and listen to Tool.
Don’t ask for pics of me listening to Megadeth then, Gerda . . . sorry, I mean, Amlux. Honestly I can’t tell you two apart. Are you schizophrenic or something? You seem to contradict yourself every 5 seconds and change your mind about everything as soon as you post it.
I was only trying to please you and do what you asked. How can I make you happy, Ma’am?
This is the Maynard James Keenan thread, in case you didn’t notice, Pretty Boy - not the Post Pictures Of Yourself Posing With People You Have Slept With thread.
You’re just as fucking stupid as the other ignorant grunt here.
Do us all a favour and listen to Tool.
Oh, you think I’m pretty? That’s AWESOME!!! I knew you had a thing for me, Tina. I’m not gonna listen to your crappy ass music, but I will let you worship me as the god I am to you. So feel free to bring over the wine coolers and I’ll let you lick my armpits while I sing “Hangar 18” to you . . . over, and over again.
I’ll let you lick my armpits while I sing “Hangar 18” to you . . . over, and over again.
LOL
Late,
grmpysmrf