The new Tool album, Fear Inoculum, was released. It had been 4,869 Days between the release of Tool's 10,000 Days and their new Fear Inoculum. That's almost 13 and-a-half years... or 160 months... or 116,856 hours... or 7,011,360 minutes... or 420,681,600 seconds, or... nevermind. I think I can speak for all Tool fans when I say that we've been waiting a long time for this...
Notice if you take the way TOOL is written, and fold it over itself,
it creates a syringe ('Inoculum').
it creates a syringe ('Inoculum').
First, a Quick Time Warp to the 90s
Going back, I started really discovering my own taste in music in the 6th grade. My first album was the Escape From LA soundtrack I bought with some money I saved from illegally working as a minor, pumping gas at a full service gas station. Escape from LA was an awesomely bad, cheesy action flick I loved, released in 1996 with a solid lineup and absolutely horrific special effects.
Man, they really don't make 'em like they used to... and thank goodness for that.
The soundtrack really struck a chord with me and inspired much of my taste, with other great music by the likes of Gravity Kills, White Zombie, Stabbing Westward, Ministry, Tori Amos, and, of course, Tool. Their track, Sweat, among others, immediately hooked me and away I went. I was already somewhat familiar with Tool's music at the time, having been somewhat scared, but oddly entranced by, their unique, dark, stop-motion music videos from when they'd play on MTV. From there, flipping through one of my video-game magazines, I found one of those thick sheets that listed maybe one or two-hundred different albums, advertised as "PICK *10* CDs, ALL FOR ONLY A PENNY!", with the obligatory explosive graphic behind it that we're all oh-so-familiar with. I excitedly penned in the little square boxes for the ones I wanted, enclosed a corroded penny in the envelope with the list and sent it off, completely not grasping the concept of 'fine print' with my rapidly changing, hormone-rattled, 11-year-old brain. If I remember correctly, my collection of music began at this moment, with the order of Opiate, Undertow, and the new AEnima Tool albums, The Downward Spiral and Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails, Antichrist Superstar and Smells Like Children by Marilyn Manson, Astro-Creep: 2000 and Supersexy Swingin' Sounds, by White Zombie, and The Crow movie soundtrack.
Anyway, I remember receiving additional CDs in the mail I never ordered, seemingly for free, keeping some and tossing others. Increasingly larger bills eventually started arriving, which I naturally ignored, and collectors naturally pursued with additional fees, interest, and messages on our answering machine. I remember the story my mom told me about how she blew up at them over the phone for being the dopes who tried collecting money from an 11-year-old child, incapable of entering into any legitimate contract on his own. They stopped calling, and I still had ten cool, new music CDs. With a newfound discovery and appreciation for music, my world opened up.
All for a single penny.
Ahh, yes. Simpler times.
Lateralus was released several years later, a year before my high school graduation. With each subsequent Tool album, there's a clear sense of steady growth and refinement of their sound from a previous one, but this was a huge evolution in tone that essentially retained, while somewhat transcending, their original and iconic sound, with their next 10,000 Days feeling like an expansion and slight twist on Lateralus. These changes in style, tone, and spirit from one album to the next have always been subtle, but steady, organic, transcendent, and on their own terms, while retaining their signature unique sound.
Tool also introduced and turned me on to Alex Grey, who collaborated with them
on numerous pieces of album artwork for Lateralus, 10,000 Days, and Fear Inoculum.
on numerous pieces of album artwork for Lateralus, 10,000 Days, and Fear Inoculum.
A common thread through much of Tool's music has long been about a cycle of realizing and integrating the Jungian shadow, of change and growth, the shedding of old skin and letting go, and transcending that which we crave and hold on to from social conditioning and base instincts. Needless to say, a lot has changed in my life in those 4,869 Days, with so many things, people, places, and parts of myself left behind. My love and appreciation for Tool's music remains, however, all the same, and as it's grown and changed, so have I.
A True Scotsman's Fan's Review... A Pneumasterpiece or Premature Inoculation?
Thirteen years. Six very long songs, broken up by four tracks of instrumentals and/or oddball sonic experimentation. Fairly par the course for a Tool album, right? Wrong. These songs are absolutely epic in length and dwarf all past Tool songs -- they each range a bare minimum of over 10 minutes to up to almost 16 minutes long. Even if you smashed Parabol and Parabola off of the Lateralus album into one track, you'd still only end up at 9:02. That may sound intimidating, because it is -- but they're all good to great pieces and feel like they're over within the length of a typical song. This is truly progressive metal, with most tracks starting off quiet, low, and simple, and building up to increasingly heavier and complicated structures over the course of the song. Basically, if Pink Floyd and Tool had a baby, that baby would be named Fear Inoculum.
