Rock wasn’t ready for Tool. Some would argue, in 1993 we weren’t even worthy. ‘You’re dancing in quicksand’, sang frontman Maynard James Keenan on the aptly-titled Swamp Song. ‘You’re wading knee deep and going in, and you may never come back again…’ To catch listeners off-guard and utterly consume them was the aim. Maynard wanted this music to have that feel of standing in the surf being pulled under and out. As it took hold, it would change everything – not as some revolutionary riptide, but the subliminal Undertow after which the band’s debut LP was titled. It helped that no-one knew what to make of this quartet of misfits coming out of La-La Land. All had blown in throughout the 1980s. None, it seemed, were interested in the skin-deep sheen on which th...
