Tool: 4 Track Demo Recordings [SAND BLASTERS]

Why you'll love it

This vinyl edition is limited to 500 copies and adds three bonus tracks. It catches Tool at the very start, a band that went on to win three Grammy Awards and top the Billboard 200 with Lateralus and 10,000 Days.

This edition

• Limited to 500 copies
• Three bonus tracks

About the album

Most bands send a demo to record labels and hope. Tool were so pleased with theirs that they sold copies straight to fans, and within three months of starting out in 1990 they had signed to Zoo Entertainment. Their first cassette run of the official four-track demo was a small one, which has made it a prize for collectors ever since.

This is the sound of Maynard James Keenan, Adam Jones, Danny Carey and Paul D'Amour working out who they were going to be: dense, coiled riffs, Carey's rolling drums and Keenan's voice swinging between a whisper and a roar. Early versions of "Cold and Ugly," "Part of Me," "Crawl Away" and "Sober" point straight at the Opiate EP and the triple-platinum Undertow that followed. The bonus side adds a live "Spasm" plus Keenan's guest vocals on Rage Against the Machine's "Know Your Enemy" and Deftones' "Passenger."

For anyone who owns the albums and wants the very first chapter, this is it. Tool famously take their time between records, so a demo from the early '90s counts as fairly recent news in their world.

Also at Kops: more Tool on vinyl · browse Metal

Listen

On Sand Blasters.