TOOL: Next Steps

TOOL: Next Steps

Sweeping and progressive metal epics might’ve made TOOL famous, but the band’s in-between moments are often their heaviest, darkest, and funniest. Their first single, 1992’s “Hush”—and the whole Opiate EP, for that matter—may be shorter, grungier, and more straightforwardly metal than later albums, but even there you’ll find dark humor and sharp satire amid the double-pedaling and grinding riffs. The band takes its music very, very seriously, but nothing else is sacred—including their own fans. By the time Ænima was released in 1996, their fervent devotees—the notorious TOOL Army—had already taken on a life of their own. So, naturally, frontman Maynard James Keenan mercilessly mocked them on “Hooker With a Penis.” And while psychedelic drugs have always been a constant theme, they pushed it to the extreme on the 2006 track “Rosetta Stoned,” an 11-minute stream-of-consciousness ramble about a hallucinogen-induced alien encounter, made even more intense by Danny Carey’s astonishing, relentless percussion.

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