Tool news at the Tool Hotline

Ritual Tool

Another band to use the Tree of Life on their album packaging in more recent years is the acclaimed American progressive rock/metal band (who can categorise them?) Tool, on their limited edition CD/DVD box set Salival (“a map of consciousness projected over the body of a Macrocosmic being”). And it is with Tool that we possibly reach the apotheosis of ‘occult rock’. In contrast to the gratuitous use of magickal words and imagery by rock bands in the 1980s – co-opted almost always purely for marketing reasons – Tool employs various branches of esoteric thought as direct aids (or is that 'tools'?) in their creative process. What’s more, they do so with a level of thought and contemplation which seems light years ahead of their peers. In the words of Blair MacKenzie Blake, a close personal friend of the band, Tool have been known to…