Best Metal Videos of All Time
Number 8: Stinkfist—Tool
8: Stinkfist—Tool (USA) Total score = 10-
Scoring rationale: 9- for the song + 1 point for visual excellence = 10-
This was pre-ordained. There’s no way I could put up a top 10 best metal video list without a Tool entry in it. Biggest problem was which one to chose, because I intentionally limited this top 10 to one song per band.
But this is Tool, a band who won’t perform1 if the visual side is not in working order. Even if they haven’t made a video for each and every song they recorded, they do have specific graphics for each song they perform live.
But. . .Stinkfist? Why? Because that’s the song that helped break them through to a broader audience, not despite but rather because of its risqué content.
Again. Stinkfist? Why? You mean the meaning of the song? Tool—and singer James Meynard Keenan in particular—can be as vague abut the meaning of their songs as Rolo Tomassi (see recent live gig review here2). The surface layer is about becoming blasé because all of our impulses are immediately met (meaning we don’t have to fight for or work hard to obtain them). Then there’s much innuendo suggesting fisting, but I strongly suspect Keenan meant this metaphorically; that is, if one constantly consumes shocking matter at some point nothing is shocking anymore. Probably in jest, Keenan mentioned that ‘stink’ and ‘fist’ were about a friend of drummer Danny Carey “who wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.” Make of that what you will.
Then what does the video have to do with this? Best to view it as an alternative interpretation, as a blue nightmare where stop-motion semi-humans turn themselves inside-out (quite literally at the end) as the dark desires within manifest as a tumour outside. Let’s call it guitar player and stop-motion artist Adam Jones’s ‘surrealist interpretation’ of “Stinkfist”.
Nevertheless, this was Tool’s breakthrough song? Most definitely part of their upward trajectory. Like “Prison Sex” before it3, the video and the song’s title were deemed offensive by MTV and others, so a shorter version called “Track #1” was aired. The usual caveat with censorship in rock music applies: the more offensive it’s declared, the better it sells4.
And then Tool became Tool. The ultimate artrock band who gradually became so lost in their own artistry that they forgot to develop themselves5.
Don’t say: Hey, Tool, five albums in thirty years is not exactly the pinnacle of production.
Do say: Please keep playing live, but do try to release the new album before the tour6.
Same with Belgian metallers Amenra: if the projection equipment doesn’t work, there will be no show;
Link to be added later, review is almost done;
Their first video “Hush” already took on the PMRC’s (led by Tipper Gore) censorship, as if the band already suspected they’d encounter said censorship in the future;
Keeping in mind that a lot of Tool’s early popularity was powered by their live shows, in particular those at Lollapalooza;
Not unlike Dream Theater, another master at hiding a lack of actual progress behind an overload of technical instrumental prowess;