You could be forgiven for never having heard of, much less ever listened to, Replicants, the Tool / Failure side project. The band released just one album, a covers collection featuring interpretations of songs by David Bowie, John Lennon, Pink Floyd, Gary Numan and more, and promptly dissolved without any fanfare. But thirty years on, it remains an interesting 'lost' curio for fans of its parent bands.
The connection between Tool and Failure dates back to 1992, when Failure supported Tool at some US west coast club shows on their Opiate tour.
"We would just make fun of them constantly and they did the
same," Failure frontman Ken Andrews recalled in a 1996 interview. "It was good."
The two groups hooked up again the following year, following the release of Tool's debut album, Undertow, and there were late night talks about members of both bands coming to together to write some original material, an idea that was quickly jettisoned as their various commitments intensified.
"Our other bands were taking up too much of our energy so we’d
just occasionally get together and have some beers and play a cover
song for fun," Andrews recalled. "It was kind of like a little vacation in a way. It was fun for me to play bass, because I don’t usually play bass."
Out of these loose jam sessions Replicants was born, with Andrews and his Failure bandmate Greg Edwards joined by Tool bassist Paul D'Amour, and future Guns N' Roses keyboardist Chris Pitman, then Failure's soundman. After D'Amour quit Tool in 1995 in search of more creative freedom - "I really just wanted to have some fun and not have rules, you know?” he reflected in 2018. "Playing in Tool, as far as [being] creative, there were too many rules" - his former band's record label Zoo Entertainment offered to put out a Replicants album.
Andrews admitted that making the album at Failure's studio "got a little tedious", mainly because the band members were hardly ever together while tracking their individual parts. But, released on November 21, 1995, Replicants is a diverse and intriguing collection, its breadth typified by the fact that it opens with the quartet's take on a well-known Cars hit (Just What I Needed) and closes with their version of Pink Floyd deep cut Ibiza Bar, from More.
"Some of (the songs) we honestly loved the music and some…
it’s sort of a novelty thing," Andrews said. "Some of them we
didn’t change very much, either out of laziness or we couldn’t find
another idea."
The song that will be of most interest to Tool fans is the Maynard James Keenan-fronted cover of Wings' 1976 single Silly Love Songs, written by Paul McCartney as an answer to the less-than-subtle digs his old friend and former Beatles bandmate John Lennon took at him on How Do You Sleep? (also covered on Replicants).
Although, in 1996 interviews, Andrews stated that there might be more to come from Replicants, interest in the project waned, and the loose coalition split in 1996 when D'Amour, Edwards and Pitman formed the band Lusk, with Brad Laner of Los Angeles alt. rock band Medicine.
"Originally I kind of wanted to do more like a loopy, more arty thing. Not necessarily even songs," D’Amour told writer Alicia Berbenick. "I just thought we were going to jam and make some loops and turn it into [something] a little more loose and psychedelic; like some of those early PiL records."
As a footnote, after D'Amour's departure from Tool, Pitman played synths on Third Eye, the closing track on Ænima, before joining Guns N' Roses, and staying with Axl Rose's band for the next 18 years.
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