Photo: YouTube/Getty Images
Maya Neelakantan is outdoing herself. Last month, the 9-year-old guitar prodigy shared a 15-song TOOL medley on her YouTube channel after guitarist Adam Jones gifted her one of his signature Gibson Les Paul guitars. Now, she's uploaded the "Mother of All Mashups" that shows her shredding along to a whopping 22 TOOL songs spanning the years 1992-2022. The video was made to celebrate Jones' birthday and was shot in one take.
"I have been planning to do a special tribute for Adam Jones in return for everything he has done for me! After a lot of thinking, I decided to create a special video showing the 'Evolution of Adam Jones'! Soon after that I started working on it by listening to the entire list of Tool songs, reading more about their history, Tool's younger days, how they evolved over time, and so much more," Neelakantan wrote in the video's lengthy YouTube description. "After that I started doing the toughest part - creating a Mashup of all of their albums from their first release in 1992 till today. I set myself a few rules for this: 1. Order Songs By Album Release Dates; 2. I Can’t Go Backward Once Moved To Next Album and; 3. Create A Medley Of Songs In That Specific Sequence. These 3 rules I had set made it a bit tricky too because in the end this was actually harder than I expected. When I created my previous mashup, the Tool Clean Riffs, I had the freedom to go to any album I wanted, any song I wanted, and I had the freedom to do anything I wanted. But in this one, I restricted myself into only doing the specific albums in order and in the end, as it was hard, I learned many new things out of it."
"To make this even more challenging, I decided to make it harder by increasing the speed of the riffs, mixing the unusual time signature sections from various songs and pushing my own limit. The entire video was taken in 1 take (like all my other videos) and my arms were hurting by the time I finished it," she continued. "By playing these songs in order, I was really able to experience the changes and see how Tool evolved musically over the years which is a very special experience. It's even more thrilling than listening to the songs. And it's a different experience hearing the songs through the guitar perspective!"
Watch Neelakantan's impressive video and see the full list of songs below.
Maya Neelakantan 22-Song TOOL Mashup
Trailer
Opiate
Hush
Prison Sex
Flood
Undertow
Stinkfist
Aenima
Eulogy
Lateralus
The Grudge
The Patient
Jambi
Rosetta Stoned
The Pot
Vicarious
Right In Two
Penuma
Invincible
Descending
7empest
Fear Inoculum
Opiate 2
Outro