Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta has given a brutally honest opinion of the most recent Tool album – describing it as "spa music".
Tool's fifth album Fear Inoculum was released in 2019 and received almost universal acclaim. Metal Hammer's review said the record "feels like a justification of why the world never grew tired of the idea of new music from Tool."
But Jasta, who is also the host of the Jasta Show podcast and former host of MTV's Headbangers Ball, was underwhelmed by the album.
Explaining what he attributes his own success to, Jasta tells This Day In Metal: "I think it's gotta be authentic, it's gotta be from the heart.
"You just know when you know. And sometimes you can bring that idea to someone else and they write your shit off.
"Or you can put your blood, sweat and tears into a record and some reviewer will listen to it once and go, 'No, this sucks,' just like I did with the last Tool record that sounded like spa music.
"I never got into Tool, but every other year, maybe, I'll go, 'I'm gonna try to get into Tool.' And then someone will recommend a song and then I'll go listen to the song. And a lot of times I end up liking the song. I never really go back to it, but I will hear it and I can recognise the genius in it.
"I don't have any desire to really like go back and listen to it again, but I can say, 'wow,' in the moment, when I do go check it out. It was not too long ago on my Patreon, I was saying, 'Man, I tried to listen to some song off the last album, and it sounded like I was in a spa in Sedona, waiting to get a massage' or something. It was atmospheric and mellow and ethereal."
Jasta also explained how he was offered the chance to interview Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan on his podcast. But he turned the opportunity down because Keenan apparently only wanted to talk about his winemaking.
Jasta says: "A publicist was like, 'I might be able to get Maynard from Tool on your podcast, but he doesn't want to talk about Tool, he wants to talk about wine'.
"That sounded like the worst episode ever. But then I thought you know what, just because I don't like wine and I think wine is dumb and I think wine drinkers are annoying sometimes, maybe I need to change my outlook.
"It never happened, but who knows."
