TOOL

Unpredictable art metallers with a wry sense of humour.

Established in the early ’90s, Tool are known for mixing dark underground metal with art rock while often crafting songs of epic structures and lengths.

Guitarist Adam Jones convinced his friend, vocalist Maynard James Keenan, to make music his career after he’d been discharged from the army. The pair formed the band Tool in Los Angeles, rounding out their line-up with bassist Paul D’Amour and drummer Danny Carey.

The four-piece signed a deal with Volcano Records soon after and broke into the nu-metal scene with their 1992 EP Opiate. Its track Hush got the band noticed thanks to the accompanying music video featuring all of them naked except for strategically placed parental guidance stickers.

Tool’s debut album Undertow arrived in 1993 boasting blistering tracks like Prison Sex and Sober. The quartet also played at Lollapalooza that year, starting out on the second stage but drawing such a crowd they were quickly moved up to the main stage.

In 1995, D’Amour left the band to try other things and was replaced by former Peach bass player Justin Chancellor. Tool’s sophomore effort Ænima came out in 1996 and saw them evolve from the confines of metal into labyrinth arrangements that included elements of alternative, progressive and art rock. Debuting at No.2 on the Billboard 200 chart, it contained the top 10 hits Stinkfest (released alongside a stop-motion animation video that was also deemed controversial) and Forty Six & 2 plus its title track went on to win a Grammy Award in 1998 for Best Metal Performance.

Due to legal problems with their record label and Keenan working on his supergroup side project A Perfect Circle, the band’s third album Lateralus wasn’t released until 2001. Preceded by Grammy-winning single Schism, it not only shot to the top of the Billboard 200 chart on arrival, but also peaked at No.16 on the UK albums chart.

In the years that followed, Keenan started another side project, Puscifer, and released a couple of albums before focusing on Tool’s fourth record. Arriving in 2006, 10,000 Days reached the No.4 spot on the UK albums chart. The band hit the road to support it in 2008 and headlined Lollapalooza in 2009. However, they went on hiatus for about three years before returning and touring at intervals that worked around their various music projects and family commitments.

After 13 long years filled with delays and an ongoing lawsuit with their label, Tool finally returned with new music in 2019, their fifth opus Fear Inoculum, which topped charts in the US and again reached No.4 in the UK. The band were nominated for two Grammys in 2020, winning for Best Metal Performance for their song 7emptest.

In September 2021, Tool announced a UK arena tour stopping in Manchester, Birmingham and London in May 2022.