After all, this is a band which refused to allow its music on streaming and digital download services until mere weeks ago. Meanwhile, guitarist Adam Jones has been actively hyping Fear Inoculum on Instagram since the band entered the studio last year. And yet somehow, Tool are capturing the undivided attention of a public with a raging attention-deficit issue.
For months, Fear Inoculum had been touted as one of the most heavily anticipated albums of the year, if not the decade. Whether or not the music itself lives up to the expectations fans have heaped on it after such an excruciating buildup, the album has already accomplished something remarkable by remaining in the spotlight far longer than most headlines of global consequence, like natural disasters, mass shootings, or utterances by President Donald Trump.
They marveled at how 10, Days debuted at No. Kot and DeRogatis considered this an amazing feat for a band that had waited five years to put out an album and done little to court media attention. They have this fetish for art rock. They could all publicly reject the idea of identifying as metal bands while still attracting metalheads in droves. Where metal and the nu metal wave that was soon to come was mostly fueled by expulsions of rage, alt-metal presented an anger rooted in a mix of brooding and contemplation.
During one performance, the band learned the Church of Scientology owned the venue they were playing, and Keenan berated the crowd. Someone recorded the event, and it's available to watch online. Imagery from the occult is often woven through Tool's work, from their lyrics to their album covers to their live shows, such as the seven-sided star that often appears at their concerts.
Salival 's limited-edition release boasts the sefirot, or the kabbalistic tree of life. A friend of the band, Blair MacKenzie Blake, said their studies in the occult are ingrained in many of their works:. Carey remains the most fervent occultist in the band. Among his collection is a huge catalog of books written by prominent people in the world of the occult, such as Aleister Crowley.
Carey's collection also includes swords used by his father in Masonic rituals , which he witnessed when he was a child. Tool's most widely celebrated album, Lateralus , was mostly written in Carey's studio, which is adorned floor-to-ceiling with occult imagery and artifacts. One of the very first pranks Tool pulled on their fans took place in while the group were on tour. The Tool website displayed the message:. Fans were so distraught, they called authorities demanding more information.
The furor was so widespread that MTV released a news brief stating Tool were indeed alive and well. Most recently, in , they pranked their fan base with a purported "leak" of one of their yet-unheard songs. They posted this on their Facebook page:. This music leak is unsettling on many levels. First off, it truly sucks to have your unfinished music available on the interweb without your consent. And second, to have it immediately picked up by someone and released as their own work is infuriating.
We don't encourage anyone to listen to this leaked clip because it's far from finished and it will spoil what's to come. Fans later realized the group had really posted a song by Hechizeros Band, titled "El Sonidito," and passed it off as their own. Tool once pulled a similar stunt in the months before Lateralus 's release, in the midst of fake songs being "leaked" on Napster.
The band's official site posted track listings for a fictional album titled Systema Encephale that included song names such as "Lactation," "Riverchrist," and "Pain Canal. Fans have grown so accustomed to being pranked by the group, they've dubbed April 1 as April Tool's Day.
You think you're cool, right? When you kicked out people out of the house. I tell you this, one of three Americans is dying out of cancer. You know? You're gonna be one of those. Listeners assumed the ranting was simply Keenan being Keenan. Here's what Danny Carey said about the incident:. A so-called friend of a friend of a friend of Harry's Before we finally managed to figure out that nobody really knew him, he had already emptied the fridge and run up a huge phone bill. Are they okay?
Or is that weird? Do Tool fans wake up, hop in their car, and think to themselves, "You know what would be a great way to start my day? A minute metal song that lyrically and sequentially aligns with the numerical code of Fibonacci's work. Is the band commentating on our gluttonous behavior as consumers?
Is it meant to show how a capitalist society creates an inability to differentiate between whether the goods and information we receive are genuine or recycled? Is it meant to soundtrack the collective loop of human suffering? Or is it pure creative liberty in its truest form, demonstrating that everything comes back full circle and that we all live and die and that nothing is actually new? Does the album title refer to a literal injection of fear, or does it refer to the concept of aging?
That at some point all of us will succumb to our own form of "fear innoculum" because we all fear dying and leaving the realm of our own understanding and subconscious? Is the whole album a commentary on the human experience? Is the human experience an existential lie we tell ourselves to keep us from succumbing to our own primordial impulses? Or are we all trapped in our own perceptions of reality? How do we know our existence is even real?
How do we know we're not just comatose beings, floating in an oculus rift of our own perceived realities? Do we have the ability to escape our fleshy bodies and experience true enlightenment and revelation, or are our bodies a cage we are trapped in and which prevent us from reaching nirvana? Does true enlightenment come only in death? Does Fear Inoculum refer to the idea that we may never be truly enlightened or spiritually awoken until we die, and that our fear of dying is exactly what keeps us trapped in the cycle of human suffering?
Is my inability to understand the meaning of Tool mean I'm a Tool fan? Does Tool want me to understand them?
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