Song Of The Week: 5/20/12

Song: "Ticks & Leeches"

Artist: Tool

Album: "Lateralus"

Year: 2001



"Ticks & Leeches" appears to be a song about all those people that only hang around you to use you for everything you're worth. They suck you dry like ticks or leeches. They want to feed off your wealth, your talent, your fame and your power. They want to take every last ounce of blood from you, then probably toss you aside when you no longer have the same status. It very well could be about Tool's own battle with their record company, Volcano Records who they were in a bitter dispute with right around the time of the release of 2001's "Lateralus". It could also be about the record industry in general and the way they try to suck everything they can out of their artists until they deem them no longer viable to the company itself. Formed in California back in 1990, Tool has gone on to become one of the most successful metal/progressive rock bands on the scene today. The band has been around for twenty-two years, but has released music rather sporadically with just four full length studio albums released during that time. They basically release new material almost every five years. Perhaps, this is to Tool's advantage. Maybe the more time spent perfecting their albums is the reason why most of their music happens to be nominated for Grammy's and other awards after each release. Their 2001 album "Lateralus" came at a time when Tool, as I said before, was butting heads with their record label. It was also a time when Tool very much stood against the illegal file sharing of music as well. They, along with bands like Metallica, led the fight against music file sharing sites such as Napster. In fact, just to mess with the Napsters of the world, Tool announced a bogus album title, full with fake song titles which made the file sharing sites explode with the bogus material. When the real "Lateralus" finally dropped, it was named Kerrang!'s album of the year. It also won a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for their single "Schism". It was odd for a band to have singles that clocked in at more than six minutes, but Tool was never one to conform to record company "standards". They have and always will do things their way, no compromise. When you have the level of success that they have had, that's definitely a luxury for any band. Currently, Tool has recently embarked on their "Tool Winter Tour" which ended in February 2012. The band has confirmed that they have been working on new material for a fifth studio album and are kind of waiting on vocalist, Maynard James Keenan to come in and hammer out some of the lyrics and vocals. As I said before, Tool oftens has a new album every five or six years so they are very much due for some new material being that their last release was 2006's "10,000 Days".