Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta had some positive words about perseverance and believing in your art during a recent interview with This Day In Metal. This being the Internet and the age of doofy pull quotes, Jasta made one off comment about Tool's 2019 comeback album Fear Inoculum sounding "like spa music" and of course that's where the conversation went for a little while.
Jasta originally started off talking about attributing his success to believing in what he does, and how some things maybe take a little longer to ultimately resonate with people.
"Whatever it is, if it's writing a book, if it's making a film, if it's making a record or writing a poem or fucking making a recipe — I don't care what it is — you've gotta block out the people that maybe don't believe in you to do it and you've gotta find the ones that do and you've gotta keep them close and you've gotta make sure that you do right by them and that they appreciate what you do and vice versa," said Jasta.
"And then also, I think it's gotta be authentic, it's gotta be from the heart, 'cause the stuff that really resonate to people 10, 20, 30 years in is stuff that I knew in the moment was 'it'. You just know when you know. And sometimes you can bring that idea to someone else and they go, 'Nah', 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. And that's gonna happen. But you've gotta roll with the punches and you've just gotta have faith that it will find the ears and the eyes that it needs to find.
"Somebody said to me once. It might have been Shavo from System [Of A Down]. I forget if it was on the Slayer tour or another tour that they did where the crowd wasn't feeling it. And it doesn't matter now, because the millions… They sold, like, five million records So, like, okay. So, yeah, so, big deal — that one show with Slayer or one show with someone else where the crowd didn't like it, five million other people discovered them and liked it. So, they're out there. You've just gotta keep showing up. And I guess it goes back to the reps, too — just keep putting in those reps, no matter what it is."
This of course turned into Jasta justifying why he never got into Tool, and prefers something more aggressive and straightforward like Necrot. Which is fair – I personally am a massive fan of Tool, but I can totally see how people don't like it. Though I'm not sure I've ever thought of them as spa music… maybe Paul Riedl's solo ambient works would be a better fit, in terms of metal-spa crossover?
"I never got into Tool, but every year — every other year, maybe — I'll go, 'Hey, 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 recognize the genius in it. The playing is incredible and the production is incredible and [Maynard James Keenan's] voice is incredible. 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… I don't even know how to I don't even know how to describe it. It's like it was something really delicate, soft but calming. And I'm, like, I just wanna listen to Necrot and just fucking [singing] 'Drill the skull'. I'm just a caveman at heart — I just wanna hear, 'Drill the skull.' And so then I listen to Necrot and I'm thinking, 'Man, Maynard probably hates this shit.'"
