Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with Louder, Maynard James Keenan (Tool, Puscifer, A Perfect Circle) further discussed his views on the current state of the world. According to him, “the fucking world’s on fire.”

Keenan said the following:

“I don’t know if you noticed, but the fucking world’s on fire and I don’t think there’s enough buckets around to help put it out. There’s a lot of people that don’t seem interested or even notice that it’s on fire. We’ve lost the f*cking way. I think the ability to talk to each other is vanquished. It’s been unplugged. Frustrating times.”

He also commented on his political beliefs:

“I lean left, but I’m definitely centrist because it’s more about education and it’s about understanding motivation, and I’m absolutely abhorrently opposed to fundamentalist extremism. And there’s a whole bunch of those these days – right, left, centre, extremist people that are just latching on to a thing and they can’t move.

They are stuck, they’re going to die on this hill over stupid sh*t. And that’s the nature of the programming, of the AI, of the algorithms, feeding that dopamine addiction. We’re just being f*cking puppeteered.”

He went on to say he uses his art to report:

“I’m not a politician, I’m not a soldier – I was a soldier, but I’m not a soldier. My only primary motivation is to see what I see, report the story. All I can do is what I know how to do, which is to tell stories, sing songs, make food, get you drunk. That’s all I can do.”

He also added the following about politics invading the lives of children:

“I have a pretty good idea of what I was doing at the age of ten. But [my daughter was] with her friends talking Project 2025. Can you imagine being ten years old talking about that shit?”