While Tool‘s upcoming fall tour is slated to begin in September, their drummer, Danny Carey, spent some time sharing thoughts on the band’s music with Music Radar. He revealed a detail during the conversation, pointing out a particular song in their list that made him struggle while playing.
When asked about their hardest piece, the drummer named ‘The Grudge’ a physical challenge and said:
“For endurance, it’s ‘The Grudge’ because if we’re not in tour shape, my hands almost cramp up because of all the Swiss Triplets. It’s just a real physicals song overall; there’s some double kick stuff in there.”
He went on to pick two of their newer songs:
“The trickiest ones might be ‘Invincible’ or ‘7empest,’ the newer ones. Just because I’m not used to it.“
During a conversation on Steve-O’s Wild Ride! podcast, his bandmate and frontman Maynard James Keenan also mentioned the challenges of performing their work. The singer talked about how challenging it was to perform their older hits from albums like ‘Opiate’ and ‘Undertow.’
Referring to his age, he explained:
“Something is… You know, you just can’t do that. So I think with age, you find ways to sing the thing where it’s not creating damage. You can actually recreate it without having to pick a scab, emotionally and literally, like hurting yourself. So I think my writing has changed over the years, and I can do some of those songs.
I can’t do a whole set of those songs. I can pepper them in, so I can still do some of those things, but you can’t… If you’re actually sitting down and thinking about it, you can’t expect some of those dudes, [from] back in the day, to do the thing they did… 30 years ago, 40 years ago. You can’t expect that out of that body. Your body doesn’t do those things forever.”
Last year, Tool re-recorded and released a new version of their debut EP in honor of its 30th anniversary. This updated version was about twice as long as the original and included lyrics from live performances. It was also accompanied by a music video called ‘Opiate2.’
