Tool are just King Crimson in Joker makeup. They thrive in an enormously popular world of polyrhythms and prurience; of Jungian philosophy and Bill Hicks memes; of pewter dragon statues with orbs in their mouths and guys telling you that DMT is actually a chemical in your brain. Their multi-part songs are loosely about embracing pain, grief, desire, transgression, until all your chakras are open and you know exactly why the pieces fit. But ever since hiding a song at track 69 of their debut album, Tool have always been sort of in on the joke. Sure, Keenan has a versatile, emotive voice that granted Tool an audience beyond metalheads. His trickster humor has curdled of late, culminating in Keenan writing a song in response to a bad Yelp review about his winery. Keenan is a very serious winemaker who, nevertheless, named his vineyard after a pubic wig. The stripped-down purity of sound here means that everything hangs on the songs themselves, all of which run over 10 minutes, save for a few ambient interludes and a palate-cleansing, nearly five-minute Carey drum solo backed by a giant custom synth. You get what is expected of an album over a decade in the making: a more mature, sometimes exciting collection that feels both overworked and undercooked.


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Maynard James Keenan , his voice still striking youthful — he turned 55 last spring — sings in prayer-like tones about contagion, venom, and immunity; about mania, spectacle, and exorcism. The music takes its time. It begins with the sound of storms wailing and waves crashing — oceans perhaps rising — with vocals that sound delivered underwater all this reflects guest contributions from dark-new-age ambient veteran Lustmord. So yeah: Fear Inoculum is a very good Tool record. But what does a Tool record mean in ? The band never appeared to care much about the mainstream music world, generally sneering at it when they bothered to engage it at all. Still, they were, and clearly remain, a pop-scale force. What do they mean culturally in ? Hard rock and heavy metal have become artisanal practices, folk art with arcane rituals like guitar solos and flamboyant kit-drum displays. And the dude energy they tend to valorize is suspect in the metoo era, and not without reason.
After all while every album has a whole or much larger period in time and changes. Hi, tired and abused by tiredness and disbelief. Coming from the land of where Spotify was born and developed, I'm tired of being tired. I'll pay just about anything for a truly honest non-bootlegged vinyl issue of Fear Inoculum. Wouldn't it be possible to set aside a few copies for us long time TOOLARMY members instead of having us chasing for shit and dust just because we are on a different side of the pond between Europe and the US? Just a thought, but I don't blame anyone for not caring anyhow. I've been waiting for 10, Days to be released to vinyl too I'm hoping for a reissue of all their albums, remastered to vinyl. Same here.
It exists. This is not an accident. And it shows. While met with resounding praise upon release, including a full 5Ks from Kerrang! On Fear Inoculum, Tool started making songs that more accurately played out like movements in a symphony. It was a trait that had been glimpsed before on previous outings, but never on this sustained scale. But for all the mathy intelligence funnelled into this album, it was never at the expense of immediacy. Yes, song lengths may have ballooned, but they never felt bloated. Vocalist Maynard James Keenan had a major role in this, too. His great gift as a singer is not just the ability to locate notes that other vocalists would never think of.