By Jesse Neo, PhDMay 26th, 2024
Justin Gunnar Walter ChancellorÂ(born 19 November 1971) is an English musician, best known as the bassist forÂrockÂbandÂTool, a position he has held since 1995. Prior to joining Tool, he played in a band called Peach.Â
After moving to the US, he and his wife Shelee Dykman Chancellor opened a store named Lobal Orning in Topanga, California. The store focused on music and literature that influenced them. Unfortunately, the store shut down in 2008. He then launched the M.T.Void music project with Piotr "Glaca" Mohammed from Sweet Noise.
Early life and education
Chancellor is both English and Norwegian. He went to Tonbridge School in Kent, England. He played bass in a school band called Slice of Life and they used to perform a cover of Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night" in the dining room of his boarding house. The band put out a tape with a song of the same name. Chancellor later studied at Durham University.
Career of Justin Chancellor
In the early 1990s, Chancellor started playing bass for the band Peach. The band put out the album "Giving Birth to a Stone" and two EPs. They also toured Europe with Tool in 1994. Peach later disbanded in 1995.
After Peach broke up in 1995, Chancellor moved to the United States and joined the rock band Tool as their new bassist, taking over for Paul D'Amour. In 1996, he released the album "Ænima" with the band, which was a big success, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 chart. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for the track "Ænema".
After that, Tool took a break because of fighting with their record company. The band came back in 2001 with the album "Lateralus." It went to the top of the Billboard charts and won Tool another Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for the song "Schism." After another five years, they put out the album "10,000 Days" in 2006.
Another big success, it was the second Tool album in a row to start at the top of the Billboard 200 chart. The album produced the hits "Vicarious," "The Pot," and "Jambi," which all made it to the top 10 on the rock charts. It also won the Grammy for Best Recording Package.
Because of different creative, personal, and legal issues among Tool members, the band didn't release their fifth studio album, "Fear Inoculum," until 2019, which was 13 years after their last album. It was well-received and became Tool's third album in a row to start at number one on the Billboard 200 chart. The album also won Tool its third Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for the song "7empest".
After taking a break due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tool's drummer Danny Carey shared in 2022 that the band is busy creating new songs for an upcoming album. In a podcast interview the next year, Chancellor mentioned that the band is considering heading into the studio in 2024.
Besides being in Tool, Chancellor has shown up on different artists' songs. In 2004, he played bass on "Altered Course" from ISIS's "Panopticon" album. Then in 2010, Chancellor added bass to Intronaut's "Valley of Smoke" title track. Other guest spots include Primus's "The Valley" from their 2017 album "The Desaturating Seven," Death Grips's "Disappointed" from their 2018 album "Year of the Snitch," Author & Punisher's "Centurion" from the 2022 album "Krüller," and Night Verses's "Séance" from the 2023 album "Every Sound Has a Color in the Valley of Night: Part 1".
Chancellor and Piotr Mohamed from the Polish rock band Sweet Noise joined up to create the music duo MTVoid. Together, they put out the albums "Nothing's Matter" in 2013 and "Matter's Knot, Pt. 1" in 2023.
In March 2022, Carey announced they were working on new material for their sixth studio album, noting that "..it won't take us this long for the next one. We even had some stuff left over from the last one that we'll develop. We have head starts on three or four new songs".Â
In October 2023, Chancellor said it again and mentioned he wanted the band to start recording in 2024 after they finish touring. In January 2024, Carey talked about the new album possibly having shorter songs, saying "we might go back to making a record like Undertow. I find that idea interesting".
Musical style and influence
Tool's music has been called alternative metal, art rock, post-metal, progressive rock, progressive metal, and heavy metal. Patrick Donovan from The Age described Tool as "the thinking person's metal band. They are a mix of contradictions – cerebral and visceral, soft and heavy, melodic and abrasive, tender and brutal, familiar and strange, western and eastern, beautiful and ugly. Their music is both tight and expansive, creating an epic experience."
Tool has gained critical praise from theÂInternational Herald Tribune's C.B. Liddell for their complex and ever-evolving sound.ÂDescribing their general sound,ÂAllMusicÂrefers to them as "grinding, post-Jane's AddictionÂheavy metal",ÂandÂThe New York TimesÂsees similarities to "Led Zeppelin's heaving, battering guitar riffs and Middle Eastern modes".Â
Their album Lateralus from 2001 was likened to Pink Floyd's Meddle from 1971 by AllMusic. However, thirty years later, Tool added their unique touch by incorporating intense guitar riffs and a feeling of absolute dread into their music. Tool was first categorized as post-metal in 1993 and 1996, and again in 2006 when the term gained recognition.
A part of Tool's music uses unique time signatures. For example, in the song "Schism" from the album Lateralus, the time signature switches between "six" and "six-and-a-half" and then switches to other timings. Other songs like the title track of the album and "Wings for Marie (Pt 1)" and "10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)" from 10,000 Days also have changing rhythms.
Besides that, each band member likes to try different things in music. Bass Player magazine said Chancellor's bass playing has a "thick midrange tone, guitar-style techniques, and elastic versatility". For instance, the magazine talked about using a wah effect by hitting "the notes with the left hand and adjusting the bass's tone controls to change the sound", like on the song "The Patient" from Lateralus.
Drummer Carey completes the band's rhythm section by using various techniques, including polyrhythms and custom electronic drum pads that trigger different sounds like tabla and octoban.
Keenan's singing skills have been described in a more personal way by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. After his show at an Alice in Chains reunion concert in 2005, freelancer Travis Hay thought he was "perfect for taking over Layne Staley's role." The New York Times commented on his contributions to A Perfect Circle and Tool, saying that "both bands depend on Mr. Keenan's talent to give deep meaning to feelings like desire, anger, and aversion, with the richness in his voice adding a hint of profundity."
According toÂGuitar PlayerÂmagazine, Jones does not rely on any one particular guitar-playing technique but rather combines many techniques.ÂFor example, AllMusic wrote that he "alternately utiliz[es] power chords, scratchy noise, chiming arpeggios, and a quiet minimalism" in "Sober".Â
Also, the band tries out different instruments like a "pipe bomb microphone" (a guitar pickup inside a brass cylinder) and a talk box guitar solo on "Jambi".
The band focuses on the sound of their songs and tries to minimize the impact lyrics can have on how songs are perceived. They usually do not include song lyrics with their albums, but they made an exception for the CD release of Fear Inoculum. The band pays special attention to the arrangement of lyrics, as seen in "Lateralus".
The number of syllables per line in the lyrics to "Lateralus" correspond to an arrangement of theÂFibonacci numbers[133]Âand the song "Jambi" uses and makes a reference to the common metrical footÂiamb.ÂThe lyrics onÂÃ?nimaÂandÂLateralusÂfocus on philosophy and spiritualityâ??specific subjects range from organized religion in "Opiate", toÂevolutionÂandÂJungianÂpsychology in "Forty-Six & 2" andÂtranscendenceÂin "Lateralus".Â
On the album 10,000 Days, Keenan wanted to talk about issues that were important to him personally. The album is named after the twenty-seven years that his mother struggled with health problems after a stroke until she passed away in 2003.
Live shows
After their first tours in the early 1990s, Tool has been the main act in worldwide tours and big festivals like Lollapalooza (1997 and 2009), Coachella (1999 and 2006), Voodoo Fest (2001 and 2016), Download Festival (2006 and 2019), Roskilde (2001 and 2006), Big Day Out (2007 and 2011), Bonnaroo (2007 and 2022), All Points West Music & Arts Festival (2009), and Epicenter (2009).
They have been joined on stage by many artists like Buzz Osborne and Scott Reeder on several occasions; Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha during their 1991 tour; Layne Staley in Hawaii, 1993; Tricky, Robert Fripp, Mike Patton, Dave Lombardo, Brann Dailor of Mastodon, and experimental arts duo Osseus Labyrint during their 2001-02 Lateralus tour; and Kirk Hammett, Phil Campbell, Serj Tankian, and Tom Morello during their 2006-07 tour. They have played songs by Led Zeppelin, Ted Nugent, Peach, Kyuss, the Dead Kennedys, and the Ramones.
Live shows on Tool's headline tour incorporate an unorthodox stage setting and video display.ÂKeenan and Carey line up in the back on elevated platforms, while Jones and Chancellor stand in the front, toward the sides of the stage.Â
Keenan often faces the backdrop or the sides of the stage rather than the audience.ÂNoÂfollowspotsÂor live cameras are used;Âinstead, the band employs extensive backlighting to direct the focus away from the band members and toward large screens in the back and the crowd.Â
Breckinridge Haggerty, the band's live video designer, says that the resulting dark spaces on stage "are mostly for Maynard". He explains, "[a] lot of the songs are a personal journey for him and he has a hard time with the glare of the lights when he's trying to reproduce these emotions for the audience. He needs a bit of personal space, and he feels more comfortable in the shadows".ÂThe big screens are used to play back "looped clips that aren't tracked to a song like a music video. The band has never used any sort of timecode. They've always made sure the video can change on-the-fly, in a way that can be improvised. ... The show is never the same twice".Â
When the 10,000 Days tour was happening, the videos were created by Jones, his wife Camella Grace, Chet Zar, Meats Meier, and Haggerty. Some of Zar's work has been shared on his DVD called Disturb the Normal.
Net worth of Justin Chancellor
Justin Chancellor, the bass player for the rock band Tool, is an English musician with a net worth of $45 million. He first joined the band for their second studio album "AEnima" in 1996, which was a huge success reaching #1 in New Zealand and #2 in the United States, as well as achieving a 3x Platinum certification.
The band's third album "Lateralus" came out in 2001 and sold 2 million copies. It was a hit, reaching the top spot in the US, Australia, and Canada. Their fourth album "10,000 Days" was released in 2006 and also reached #1 in multiple countries including the US, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Tool, the band he's in, has won many Grammies.
The main bass guitar Chancellor uses is a Wal MKII 4-string he bought based on a friend's suggestion while working on the album "Ã?nima". The combination of woods and electronics in the instrument contributes to the midrange cut and punch that Chancellor is famous for. In addition, Chancellor has also played with a Music Man Stingray, Gibson Thunderbird, and Warwick Streamer. He has paired his instruments with Mesa/Boogie and Gallien-Krueger amps, along with various Boss effects.
Chancellor started a record and book store called Lobal Orning in 2003 with his wife, Shelee Dykman. Located in the mountains of Topanga in the Los Angeles area, the store offered a variety of music, books, and magazines. Unfortunately, it closed in March 2008.
