page: 16
author: Mordechai Kleidermacher


Tool's Adam Jones is a happy man. The usually reserved guitarist is
excited because of one Justin Chancellor, Tool's brand new bassist, who
joined the gloomy metal band following the departure of Paul D'Amour. 

"The new guy is great," says Jones. "He was our first pick even when we
were just talking hypothetically about who could fill those shoes. He
wrotes riffs like Tool's, his favorite band was Tool, he's solid and he
looks like the devil." 

Chancellor, a Brit who formerly held down the bottom end for the English
group Peach, will make his debut recording with Tool on the band's
forthcoming third album, the follow-up to 1993's platinum Undertow. That
album spawned "Sober," the popular radio track and memorable MTV video
featuring an eerie little meat puppet guy. Expectations are high for the
long-overdue new album, but Jones, who is still hard at work in the
studio, is at something of a loss when it comes to talking about it. 

"Well, it's hard for me to say," he says. "It's like living in a room and
the cat always pisses on the rug. Your friend comes in and goes, 'Man, it
smells like piss in here.' And you go, 'really?' because you live in the
room and you're used to it. We're around the music so much, so it's kind
of hard to comment on it." 

Jones does hint that the album's songs will be, on average, longer than
those of its predecessors. "We've never been a radio-friendly band, which
is 'three minutes, a three minute song!' Our label always wants us to edit
songs and we refuse to do that. We grew up in a time when all our favorite
albums, by bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd weren't radio-friendly.
They were working out a lot of emotions in their music, and as long as it
took for them to record the songs-whether it was three minutes or 12 or 24
or a whole side of an album-that was fine. We're sort of going back to
that approach.