Tool’s Maynard James Keenan Reveals an Untold Story About ‘7empest’

Tool singer Maynard James Keenan, spoke in a recent interview with Junkee and revealed an untold story about a song called “7empest,” found on his latest album Fear Inoculum.

Maynard has explained how they finished that song with some guitar riffs and materials from the Aenima album, which was released 21 years ago. He added that Tool guitarist Adam Jones has been hoping to use one of his riffs for 21 years, and finally used it on the song called “7empest” while recording the new album Fear Inoculum.

Here’s the statement:

“There are riffs on the new album that Adam had before I was even in the band,” he offers. “The last track, ‘7empest’ [pronounced Tempest], the main body of the first chunk of the song is a verse and then a really heavy recurring riff, something I came up with in [the time signature of] 21.

We’d been trying to find [another riff that goes with it], and it ended up being something we’d tried on several albums, with different ideas, and it just never clicked. And then all of a sudden there it is and it works, and it totally is the complete thing that the other riff needed. I think Adam had that riff when we were trying to write for [1996’s] Aenima album. It just kept getting brought up and put on the side.

Adam’s really cool like that. He’s very precious about the ideas we have and he’s always like, ‘Don’t forget about that, we’ll use it one day. You can’t be frivolous about them. You’ve got to respect the fact that they’re really worth something when you first come up with them and you think they’re good, so don’t throw them away.’ So we have this huge catalogue of stuff that we keep on the backburner.”

source.