Tool is heavy metal’s great anomaly. Though bathed in the rhythmic complexities of King Crimson, the decaying doom of Black Sabbath and the harshly twisted absurdity of Faith No More, the band̵…
is heavy metal’s great anomaly. Though bathed in the rhythmic complexities of King Crimson, the decaying doom of Black Sabbath and the harshly twisted absurdity of Faith No More, the band’s thing was always comprised of a focused ferocity and a precise, unyielding aggression singular to them. For better or worse, no one comes across like Tool — yet it’s been 13 years since the group lent that sharp focus to new music.
Thirteen years after that last group release, their return to recording with “Fear Inoculum” is split between between prayerful songs that top the 10-minute mark and cuts as short as two minutes. In the nearly 11-minute opening track, Tool at first comes on all slithery and cool before beating the listener over the head with Danny Carey’s pitter-pattering drums, Adam Jones’ clarion-clear, cracking guitars and Keenan’s high, breathy vocals and William S. Burroughs refrigerator magnet poetry kit.
“Pneuma,” with its strummed/slashed guitars and bone-rattled rhythms, has a similarly foreign and crepuscular melody, here with a set of lyrics grounded in how the spirit is “bound to this flesh” but “bound to reach out and beyond this flesh.” The steady majesty of this song is something to behold, a torrid tone akin to the ritualistic reach of David Bowie’s “Lazarus,” albeit without the creeping intensity of death’s door at hand.
The wild winds and rippling waves of an instrumental “Legion Inoculant” roll peacefully into “Descending,” with its feel dedicated to free falling, floating and boundlessness. Yet before we get too comfortable with the notion of sky-high freedom, Keenan reminds the listener, in a deeper voice than usual, that, “Falling isn’t flying.
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