page: 86
 title: maynard keenan the dark prince of art-metal
author: pat blashill

The fabulously tortured Maynard James Keenan will be touring through 
March with his user-friendly side project A Perfect Circle (which, 
having sold nearly 2 million albums, is already more than a side 
project).  After that-drum roll, please-his main rig, Tool, will 
release the third punishing joint of their cathartic career, the very 
tentatively titled Systema Encephale.  It's been close to five years 
in the coming, and the metallic world has changed drastically.  But 
the new songs are reportedly the kind of ambitious, long-form prog-
metal epics we've come to love.  Tool don't need rapping or 
electronic beats: There's a hard, timeless beauty in the yin/yang 
combo of Keenan's shredded coon and the sadistic, nail-gun guitars of 
Adam Jones.  See the smash-your-head climax of Aenima's "Forty Six & 
2", for instance, which is scorching enough to exorcise just about 
all of the everyday rage and frustration from your average 7-Eleven 
clerk.  Metal machine music has never been so perversely consoling.
Posted to t.d.n: 03/05/01 11:21:23