Rock Hard interview

Madkilkor on Toolnavy brings us some highlights of a Tool interview in French magazine Rock Hard.

  • They didn’t gave titles during the listening session, because the weren’t sure about them at the time. Yet Adam mentions “lost keys” and “rosetta”.
  • “Lost keys” is “the introduction to “rosetta”".
  • Maynard was there at the beginning of the writing process, than left before coming back. Adam says that it’s better than for Lateralus (Maynard only came when all the songs were already written), but he hopes Maynard will be here all the time for the next album.
  • How Adam would define Tool : “there are a lot of maths, it’s heavy and you’re not gonna like it.”
  • There is no DVD in the works. There were plans, but they prefered to make a new album. The new album and the tour are the priorities.
  • They love France.
  • The set for the tour will be sober, at least for the first shows.
  • The album is their most personnal, it’s “coming from the guts”. Some usual rant about how Bush is stupid and how the album is about frustration. But Danny adds that the approach to politics in Tool is different from the one of APC, they don’t want to adopt a close political discourse which would be fast outdated.
  • The reviewer says that Danny is more busy than ever on the drums. Danny answers that he’s not looking to play a lot of notes but wants to densify the sonic space and to dynamise the music, but that nevertheless the king in the movie Amadeus would say about his playing : “Too many notes!”.
  • APC is over.
  • They would like to get rid of labels and to do everything by themselves, and they think artists will be able to do so soon.
  • They don’t take themselves seriously at all.

Some of the translation there is a bit rough I think, but you get the idea. Bye Bye APC!

65 thoughts on “Rock Hard interview

  1. fuck this. if apc is broken up then im never listening to tool again. thats my punishment to maynard cause i know he is the only one that would cause apc to break up cause he would rather pick grapes than make music. i like tool and everything but they arent that great. 10,000 Days sounded like… durrr… every other fuckin tool cd ever put out. except for those few songs where they play the same fuckin guitar riffs over and over and over again and have maynard dubbed underneath it whispering for eight minuets or have a nurse talking to a doctor for two hours. THOSE SONGS WERE MUCH BETTER (and thats called sarcasm). or how about them ripping off Godsmacks signature of mixing in tribal drumbs with heavy music. Dont get me wrong i think maynard is a genious, but it showed best through APC. Each one of the apc albums were flawless and completely diffrent from each other. They were the most unique band out there and if theyre over than may may can fudge himself.

  2. okay and to all those people who think that maynard is a christian, just look a little closer. da vinci was an agnostic and he still made paintings of christ. maynard likes to write from the point of view of other people, even if he doesnt like the people whos point of view hes writing from. just look at thirteenth step. all from the point of view of others. moreover when he was talking about his mother going to heaven, it was only because she thought she was going to go to heaven. maynard’s more of a hippy spirtual “i believe in love” person.

  3. Mattheap- First learn how to spell genius. Then stop trying to understand Maynard’s genius!

  4. yea lol critisize the one complement i give maynard in that whole thing. i apologize for spelling JEEniouss wrong… bitch.

  5. i think it doesn’t matter if APC is gone or maynard is out of it, it’s their life and at the same time the way they’ve inspired people with their music what matters most. and 10,000 Days is a piece of ART!! congratulations to you guys!

  6. i think a perfect circle are better than tool (although i still like tool) and i think maynard should work more with apc than tool.i really think apc could have had a big future ahead of them.but now i am just completely fucked up cause i never saw them live.

  7. Well… that was a lot of reading to do. Very controversal…

    I wouldn’t count on Keenan’s “APC is over” speech. It’s widely known that he’s often leaking misinformation about him, his bandmates and projects he’s doin.

    And about the APC vs. Tool thing. They are two completely seperate bands and one has nothing to do with the other. Just like someone said before, it’s for Keenan just another way to interprete his vision of music.

    Without putting them both into cases or give them a hard time, in my opinion APC is the band with the far more accessible music where you can listen and enjoy from the first moment whereas Tool has more deeper qualities that can’t be accessed when you don’t hear closely and often.

    For example i start out as someone who dislikes Tool records which have just been released. I even traded the Aenima with a friend after the first time i heard it. But every time i listen again and again it becomes more than just music. It’s more like experiencing art or evolution or whatever you wanna call it. The Live-Shows are a good addition to their artwork. They are perfecly assembled and in contradition to a opinion above i loved the Lateralus-Tour. Which band had ever had the guts to put their leadsinger in the background in front of a big screen where you can hardly make him out. He was something like a shadow and that just positivly freaked me out.
    As for the Parts like “Useful Idiot” or “Die Eier von Satan” or all other obvious freaked out stuff… there is meaning there if you want it to be. For example “Useful Idiot” could be a relation to Keenan’s time at West Point, where a tool was a soldier who always obeys the rules and doesn’t think his own way. Or “Die Eier von Satan” where everyone believed that Tool would be some kind of Nazi-Band although it was just a rather neat recipe for cookies (well Space Cookies for that matter). Not only genius no… it was hard and inaccessable but if you looked real hard you got to the point where you see something and something that noone can take away from you.
    That is what Tool is all about… Tool is a tool for people to experiencing themselves, evolving in the process and come out of it on the other side as a far more understanding or even better person. That is in my opinion the main reason why every bandmember hides the meaning of this or that song cos it has to be different for every listener there is. As for the records as such… with every record they evolved themselves writing their own legend in the process. And if you can’t see the beauty in that than there is nothing for you to gain if you listen to them.

    I love the new album and wouldnt wanna trade it for something else…

    But if you wanna further discuss that you are free to write me emails to elmarholthaus@gmx.de, although i wouldn’t even consider me an expert on Tool or APC… there’s just to much to tell… right or wrong… about them and you can’t be sure if you’re right or wrong. And that is exacly what’s been fascinating me more and more with every records that was realeased and will be.

  8. Well at first I was a bit disappointed that APC was over but after reading this I have a spec of hope that they will return one day.

    APC and Tool are both great bands but the only thing is that APC condenses the greatness of Tool into 3-4 minute songs and are more appealing to people hearing them for the first time.

    Each band has their uniqueness that made them stand out amongst the others and I wouldn’t want to see either of them to end.

  9. hey, im a tool fan through listening to APC.. and i must say MJK seems to put more feeling and effort behind his singing in APC, you can hear him more. In tool he’s just a background intrument. As for danny carry vs josh freeze. Id rather be in a band with josh freeze. Josh Freeze is imo the best drummer in the world, he isn’t the fastest or wateva cos he doesnt need to be. Danny Carry’s drumming is repetive.

    If apc really do breakup, it’ll be very sad cos they just recently became my favourite band.

    10000 days is a ok album.. i only listen to a few tracks off there.

    anyway…. im off to bed cheers.

  10. My opinion is that what we really loves to hear is maynard sing. No one can actually say he loves tool but hates APC or the other way. In that case I would call that person fuckin retarded. It almost doesn’t matter what he does, his voice is so amazing , that at least I actually almost doesn’t like to listening to other music. **However I cannot let go about someone critisizing Deftones up here.. They at least don’t do what all other suckers do. Chino is actually a great singer, even thou I think he should stick to doing songs like the ones on “White Pony”. I really liked all their albums in some way, thou I got tired of their music.** Maynard will not stop delivering ordinary good music, but if he really would have finished APC we maybe won’t hear those really beautiful vocals anymore.. Tool is a more creative and impressive band in my ears, but when I here songs like “3 libras”, “The Hollow”, “Weak & Powerless”, “The Noose” or “Passive” I actually get emotional.. Billy is an incredible talented musician (like the rest in APC), even thou I probably like to hear Adam Jones playing more.. Drums are far more intensive and experimental in tool, like the rest of their music. I would say that maybe Tool are hard to listening to, but that’s why you never get bored by them. My only hope is that all musicians that are working with maynard or have done so, starts delivering more sweet music to our ears. I hate to wait for new songs. /Excuse my bad grammar, I’m from Sweden. /Henric

  11. I really think APC was one of the best bands! Just like Tool. U cannot compare them! its sad APC is dead. mer des noms is one of the band albums ever!

  12. Hmm…. I am saddened by the thought of APC even breaking up. I saw them 3 times on the 13th Step tour. Not just once, not just twice, but three times. I am a huge fan of both bands. 13th Step to this day will still be my top album, it doesn’t matter what kinda music any musician, band, etc puts out including Tool. But what a lot of people forget to understand is that both of these bands are very very distant from each other and the only 1 similarity they even have is they have the same lead singer. Sure Apc can’t give you these long drawn out pyschedelic trip put into a song experience. But that has been what Tool’s mainstay has been. They are a great band in there own right, very differently stylistic from the rest. But as well that was where Apc came into the picture it was like a new look at music for Maynard. If you hated or liked any of the albums from Apc or Tool at any point it was for a reason. Just as if you could learn to love them after you listened and broke down the beautiful craft that any of the musicians involved in either project layed down for you. Either band tries to get you outside of the box. But in the end it’s what the listener/wiewer lets into the very souls of themself is what it has and will be all about.
    I am very much so a bigger Apc fan yes. But also I am a huge Tool fan. Recently I got back into the sonic mastery they showed back on Aenima. And I used to think Lateralus was the best of the best fro them but 10,000 Days shows so much of Maynard that we started seeing back on 13th Step. Due to this I don’t think Maynard or Billy could ever be completely finished with Apc. They both poored there Heart, Souls, and Lives into each and every album they put out. So people should stop being “Apc is better, or no no Tool is so much better!”. Just learn to live, love and understand that each and every genuine thing put out there musicly is for a reason. Learn to stop the prejudice. Both bands rock in there own right and I hope people start to understand that.

  13. I don’t really care about “who rocked harder”. Maynard’s expression through music had a split personality, surfacing in the form of Tool and A Perfect Circle. If you were fueled by anger or depression, most Tool songs were what you’d listen to. If you wanted an intelligent and thought-provoking cd, APC’s first two cd’s were the stuff. I’ll admit, eMOTIVe sucked, but I think they had a hard act to follow after 13th Step. I’ve seen both bands live and I’d much rather have the 13th Step tour over ANY of the others.

Leave a Reply