The indie artists Maynard James Keenan said were heavier than most metal bands
When Ozzy Osbourne died, it was news that resonated around the world, as you didn’t need to be a huge fan to appreciate the impact he had on music.
He wasn’t just a great musician – he was someone who carved out a whole new path for artists across the globe. When Black Sabbath first came together, rock was already well established, but the heavy sounds we now know as “metal” hadn’t quite hit the mainstream. That’s exactly what Sabbath brought to the table, and really, it all came down to circumstance.
When Tony Iommi lost the tips of his fingers, many thought that his instrumental days were over, but Iommi made a compromise. He fashioned new fingertips out of plastic and tuned his guitar down so that the strings were loose enough to bend. This decision set the stage for what would eventually become heavy metal. Pair that with Geezer Butler’s basslines giving this sound depth, and Ozzy Osbourne’s pained vocals, and you have the first example of what would eventually become known as heavy metal.
“I’d play a load of chords, and I’d have to play fifths because I couldn’t play fourths because of my fingers,” said Iommi when discussing his playing style. “That helped me develop my style of playing, bending the strings and hitting the open string at the same time just to make the sound wilder.”
From the shadow that Black Sabbath cast over the music industry, a number of metal-lovers crawled out, branching off into a number of different subsections. One of these musicians was Maynard James Keenan, who wound up being a driving factor behind the multi-faceted and energetic rockers Tool.
Tool used that energetic metal sound but then injected their own bizarre time signatures and layering techniques in order to create a sound which was a blend of both metal and prog. A lot of this style originated in Keenan’s school days, when he realised that his relationship with rhythm was a lot different to some of his friends.
“I remember running cross country in high school, and everyone has their own breathing rhythms. It’s just supposed to be in out, right?” he said, “But I found myself running when I was in high school, and I had odd rhythms, it wasn’t just in-out-in-out rhythm, I was actually running to the steps. So if you’re going over hill or downhill, in chuckholes or whatever, my breath would follow those rhythms, which is weird.”
They paired strange time signatures with a heavy sound in order to generate something otherworldly, which captured audiences both on their studio albums and at their live shows. Even now, it’s still pretty tough to listen to Tool and not feel somewhat in awe of their ability to navigate metal and inject it with their unique musical stylings.
Their ability with rhythm is a huge part of this, but also their general breadth of knowledge about how you make songs heavy and add depth for listeners plays a key role in developing this style. Keenan always appreciated that you could achieve this in more ways than one, and that while you had metal bands such as Slayer and Metallica who were praised for their use of distortion and fuzz, he felt that some indie artists achieved heaviness in a much more effective (albeit different) way.
“So as far as weight, I think most people kind of think of weight in terms of Metallica, you know, some of the heavier bands – Slayer – but I find weight in things like PJ Harvey and Gillian Welch, and a band called Low,” he explained, “That’s where I find weight – in those almost… they’re uplifting but emotionally sad, but because they’re sad they’re uplifting to me.” Sabbath may have set the foundation for heaviness, but the genre now exists in multiple ways.
