Perhaps nocodeforparanoia is getting at the intensity
of Tool's sound. I'll agree with danlowlite in that Adam Jones's
artistic background gives him a sort of artiste aura that colors our evaluation
of his playing style, and in general the oftentimes cryptic, occult and
deep lyrics add a sense of mystery to the band. If you go to toolshed.down.net,
as danlowlite suggests, you will find tabs, but these are very basic, and
are often wrong. Sure, they have the basic melody, and most of the chords
are right, but they don't capture
all the variations and chord inversions that Adam Jones uses.
The fact that Tool is a metal band would cause many
to argue that these are minor details, as this sort of purposeful complexity
is too often associated with the shred style guitarists, or the guitar-god/guitar
hero persona started by Jimi Hendrix, and applied through the late
80's. Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, as well as Nuno Bettencourt,
John Petrucci and Reeves Gabrels are prime examples of the shred school
of soloing. Dimebag Darrel, of Pantera, also embraces this sort of
breakneck speed, caustic soloing, but Pantera are so heavy that it's hard
to compare them to 80's shred.
So if sheer speed of playing is the criteria we are
going to hold Tool to, than this is a very one sided discussion, and we find
ourselves ruling out bands simply because of the musical genre they happen
to be categorized under. Once we accept the more modern metal sound
as a valid genre, consisting, like everything else, of artists of varying
degrees of skill, we start to distinguish stylistic differences. Pantera
takes a more complex approach to soloing. To carry this over
to the whole band is a gross error. They still play power chords,
and they often play in dropped-D as well. The fact that Dimebag
Darrel rips up the fretboard for about a minute and a half each song doesn't
make the band musical geniuses.
The complexity of Tool lies both in the chord inversions
used, as well as the texturing. A major factor is Adam
Jones tone. The hardest part of playing Tool, assuming you have
comparable technical abilities, is to sound like Tool. This
is not to say that to play Tool songs is simply a question of having enough
money to afford kick-ass equipment, but also the know how to get these tones. Having
said that, one could argue that this makes Tool simply one of many studio
bands, or bands that, while in the studio, create these
wonderfully rich and complex songs, but cannot reproduce them live, as they
have only one or two guitarists. For some odd reason, this is not the case,
as Tool manage to capture this complex tone incredibly well when they play
live.
So this brings us to a dilemma. If we accept the
electric guitar as a viable instument to master, than can we consider
mastery of effects and equipment to achieve a given tone artistic ability,
or simply fidling with knobs. If the type of paint, and the texture of the
canvas can be said to play a part in the quality of a painting, or at least
in the overall aesthetic appeal, than can we parallel this to music?
If so, than Tool are wonderfully complex, and to
simply say that they're not because some people have made tabs that encompass
the bare bones of the song, or that Adam doesn't play a certain number of notes
per measure is simply missing the boat. They use drop-D because
they were influenced by Helmet, arguably the gods of dropped-D, and even
more importantly, the use of silence in the midst of a simile or riff. Helmet
is another example of a band that is perceived as simple, because most people
that tab just get the bare bones chord structure, not the inversions and
complex jazz chords that the second guitar plays. I think it is
a common misconception nowadays that heavy is simple. This is
not the case, and in this new manifestation of complexity, Tool can be said
to stand out from the crowd.