Recommend me music similar to that of Tool?
G'day,
Like most people I suspect, when I'm working I love having music on in the background.
One of my go-tos is Tool (and A Perfect Circle) because it offers the perfect mix of "wall of sound", great clear vocals, sharp interesting drumming, and guitar work that slaps and moves around instead of playing the same sound over and over again (also I am not a musician so I have no idea what the proper technical terms are for these things).
I stick YouTube Music on a Tool Mix and it's a pretty bad selection with a heap of stuff I really don't enjoy (I dislike growly or screamy voices, sad muddy instruments, or where the "wall of sound" is basically just feedback that drones on and on, etc).
I've tried going with "prog metal" and "prog rock" and "alt metal" as genres but that seems to cover a LOT of variation. No matter how many thumbs down I give there's always the screamy dudes and high pitched guitar whining popping back up.
Are there any bands that are Tool-like I can seed my selection with? The big focus being if there's vocals you can actually hear and understand them, distinct instruments that are actually playing a tune, and drumming that does something more than just maintain a beat in the background.
Some other bands I enjoy that I feel are similar enough are My Sleeping Karma, Kadavar, Witchcraft, Smote, and Riverside.
Perhaps go back to the fundamentals:
Rush
Yes
Hocus Pocus, by Focus (lol ok not really but get yer yodel on)
don’t forget king crimson!
While I enjoy Tool/APC (especially APC) they're a slight divergence from my usual likes and our tastes definitely diverge a lot, but given your description and other bands enjoyed, maybe you'd like Devin Townsend Project, Soen and/or Porcupine Tree? These I find interesting, have a nice full sound, lots of interesting parts, and mostly keep away from the things you dislike (at least, in my perception)
I think plenty of Tool fans crossover with a lot of the things you don't like which is why that happens. The sphere of bands Tool often is found in contains a lot of those. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I get that it makes it more difficult when everything "similar" recommended just falls outside the bounds of what you're into
Also +1 to Rush
What about The Contortionist? Tesseract? Sleep Token? Are these the bands you are looking for?
YUUGE s a newer band that sounds very similar, I also found Kingdom of Giants to have a very similar song architecture, but they scream, a lot.
TOOL has very strong grunge roots, and I have had the best experience finding TOOL-likes by expanding the criteria and listening to grunge. Baardvader and Robot God, both of their first albums are great, but they tend to be more psychedelic grunge. Baardvader sounds a lot like Alice in Chains.
I used to think that Chevelle had Tool-esque vibes, due to this. Haven't listened to them in a couple decades though. Looks like they're still around, but I lost track of them after the Wonder What's Next album.
It’s more A Perfect Circle-y, but I really like Soen. The vocalist especially sounds a ton like Maynard, to me anyway, and they overall have a similar sort of feel to them.
Danny Carey had a jazz side project called Volto that I thought sounded a lot like Tool, only without vocals.