The quintessential albums of Maynard James Keenan
In many ways, Maynard James Keenan’s alternative metal body of work can sit anywhere in the last 60-odd years of the rock canon.
Making his mark with Tool in the 1990s, Keenan’s creative dexterity would harken back to the psychedelia of the 1960s, the widescreen arena scope of 1970s teens, electronic flourishes bridging synthpop and post-punk scoring young adulthood, to eventually ride grunge’s wave in the aftermath of the Seattle dam burst.
But Tool were always impossible to pin down. Wielding metal attack while utterly unconcerned with much of its tropes and conventions, Tool’s artistic hunger for the eldritch and philosophical saw Keenan and the band carve a dedicated fanbase for themselves, echoing Rush’s idiosyncratic sound and Marmite reputation in the world of hard rock.
Like Rush, too, Tool would sell millions of records and thrust Keenan as one of the key faces of metal, a mantle he was never entirely comfortable with. Such success and a diffidence with fame would see Keenan clamour at other projects and guises to explore his restless musical intrigues, even to this day, 30-odd years on.
With Keenan now 62, what better time to take a look at his esoteric oeuvre and select five records for the intrepid newcomer to Tool and Keenan’s orbiting ventures?
The quintessential albums of Maynard James Keenan:
The perfect introduction: Tool – ‘Undertow’
Release Date: April 1993 | Producer: Sylvia Massy and Tool | Label: Zoo
While shaped by the alternative rock explosion that mashed music’s underground with the Billboard charts across the early 1990s, Tool was always spiked with a different air than the rest of the Lollapalooza cohort. Keenan was already stirring a heady brew of sounds and sensibilities for 1993’s Undertow debut, bristling with hard rock heft and cavernous groove and afforded the expanse of their progressive terrain to explore Keenan’s dark lyrical dwellings.
The albums would grow more esoteric and leftfield, but it’s Undertow that captures Tool at their most scrappy, a charm not often rearing its head much from then on in Keenan’s chequered output. Boasting the MTV dominating ‘Sober’, Undertow stands as the key gateway drug to Keenan’s cerebral belligerence.
Most optimistic offering: A Perfect Circle – ‘Mer de Noms’
Release Date: May 2000 | Producer: Billy Howerdel | Label: Virgin
Many a Keenan fan will have asked themselves what exactly distinguishes between Tool and A Perfect Circle. Repeat listens begin to reveal a lighter flash, a pull away from his day job’s subterranean realms to a more radiant plane of optimism. Having known each other for years as old touring buddies, Keenan and Billy Howerdel kicked off the A Perfect Circle project at the end of the 1990s and dropped the almost operatic Mer de Noms in 2000.
Injected with a lavish sonic sheen courtesy of Howerdel’s production chops, A Perfect Circle’s debut still runs the gamut of heavy angst and lyrical brood, but with its immersions of melodic washes and brighter textures reflects a more hopeful aura from the Tool frontman than is ever typically flashed.
The most explorative: Puscifer – ‘Money Shot’
Release Date: October 2015 | Producer: Puscifer | Label: Puscifer Entertainment
Initially, Puscifer was let loose to the world with little regard for even existing as a band, simply standing as a moniker for a nebulous arena of concepts ranging from short films to a clothing line that all serve a space where Keenan’s “Id, Ego, and Anima all come together to exchange cookie recipes.” Before long, Puscifer would indeed morph into another side-project, recruiting Mat Mitchell and Carina Round along the way.
Weaving a hazy lysergia of country twang and pulsing electronics, 2015’s Money Shot sees Keenan running toward Puscifer’s undefined horizon with the most unabashed spirit, a completely different world for Keenan to explore his own knotty psyche with grippingly surreal fervour.
The most infectiously silly: Green Jellÿ – ‘Cereal Killer Soundtrack’
Release Date: March 1993 | Producer: Sylvia Massy CJ and Buscaglia | Label: Zoo Entertainment
Bill Manspeaker had been captaining his “The World’s Worst Band” comedy punk outfit Green Jellÿ as early as 1981, initially Green Jellö before the namesake gelatine dessert company had other legal ideas. Into the 1990s, their offbeat videos and heavy prankery would find the perfect cultural foil in the day’s MTV network’s demand for the weird and stupid.
Not only was Keenan a quasi-member and Green Jellÿ associate before Tool took off, but the latter’s drummer, Danny Carey and frequent band producer Sylvia Massy joined in the fun for their 120 Minutes heyday. A CD sequel to the Cereal Killer longform video, Cereal Killer Soundtrack, boasts Keenan’s best high-pitched vocal for the ‘Three Little Pigs’ single, given a stop-motion promo from ‘Sober’ Claymation director Fred Stuhr.
The album that will always define him: Tool – ‘Lateralus’
Release Date: May 2001 | Producer: Tool and David Bottrill | Label: Volcano
Three albums in, and Tool just seemed to stake a new echelon of unbridled confidence. The mysticism crackled with fiercer enigma, the metal attack sharpened, and the thematic traversal infinitely more stirring. Dropped amid a 2001 rock climate still saturated with nu-metal’s cartoon buffoonery, Lateralus showed they were still the masters.
Across near 80-minutes, the drama never lets up. A cut like ‘The Patient’ seizes the senses with its weave between intimate gnaw and detonating bludgeon, ‘Mantra’s eerie phantasmic ambience, or the alchemic double act of ‘Parabol’ and ‘Parabola’ all see Keenan plumbing a depth of cabalistic metal Tool would never harness so perfectly. Even 25 years on, Lateralus stands as both Tool’s and Keenan’s crowning achievement.
