Tool ‘Fear Inoculum’ Review: At long last, the 13 years-in-the-works “new” Tool album has arrived. Was it worth the wait?
“If I had to ‘psychology 101’ [it], I would have to say, ‘Well, yeah, that’s why it would take 13 years to write something, because you’re paranoid that it’s not gonna be the best that it can be and then you second guess every single step that you make,’ when it was probably good enough — I shouldn’t say good enough — it was fantastic eight years ago.”
That’s cantankerous Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan describing the painfully long gestation period of their new album Fear Inoculum in a recent interview. That delay became its own strange cultural force: Tool fans fought amongst each other, between those claiming the band would never make another album, to others who said it would be worth the wait, no matter how long it took.
Year after year the band teased a release was imminent, which became somewhat of a running joke. The will-they or won’t-they anticipation game inspired memes and countless clickbait articles and think-pieces.
Oddly enough, the lack of a new album kept the band in the press, no easy feat given rock music’s perilous place in today’s popular musical hierarchy. Absence makes a Tool fans heart grow fonder, it seems.
But the wait is now over. Fear Inoculum has been released in deluxe physical packaging and via popular streaming services (a first for the group: until recently all of their catalogue was only available in physical media). The naysayers have been forced to concede defeat. Now the only question remaining is was it worth the wait?
Even without its lengthy creative process, Fear Inoculum is not an easy album to review. It’s a dense 10-track effort where most songs stretch well over 10 minutes, broken up by eerie electronic instrumental interludes (courtesy of drummer Danny Carey and frequent band collaborator Lustmord).
In other words, what you make of the band’s latest depends largely on how much effort you put into it. This isn’t an album you can make a snap assessment after a couple of listens, or take in piecemeal. It needs your full attention in the same way classic 70’s prog albums did (or contemporary releases from the likes of SWANS) during their heyday.
Take the title track that opens the album, a middle-eastern tinged epic full of tablas, sitar’ish strums and Adam Jones inimitable serpentine guitar lines. Maynard’s voice, more restrained than on past Tool efforts (more akin to his work in A Perfect Circle and Puscifer) rides the rhythmic pulse kept by his bandmates, ending with Carey’s double bass kickdrum massacre.
Pneuma is next, full of skittering , exotic percussion and a hypnotic stuttering stop-start guitar riff and loping baseline, where Keenan’s meditative lyrics detail the endless struggle between the physical and the spiritual:
We are spirit bound to this flesh
We go round one foot nailed down
But bound to reach out and beyond this flesh
Indeed, Keenan uses the band’s vast sonic plateaus to host some of his most naked lyrics, particularly on the lumbering Invincible, which examines he and his bandmates place in a culture so vastly different from their 90s heyday:
Warrior struggling
To remain consequential
Bellow aloud
Bold and proud
Of where I’ve been
But here I am.
That world weary feeling fuels Fear Inoculum. But that doesn’t mean it lacks passion or angst: take Descending, a true tour-de-force which opens with sounds of the ocean and rain before giving way to guttural guitar chugs and a call to action: Rouse all from our apathy, lest we cease to be. It’s a transportive jam that showcases the group’s unique take on psychedelia, expansive and immersive, punctuated with John Carpenter-esque synth-stabs.
The band save their best for (second to) last with 7empest, a 15 minute behemoth which draws upon the fury of vintage Tool. Over a phased ever evolving riff Keenan howls against the wind as only he can:
Disputing intentions invites devastation
A tempest must be true to its nature
A tempest must be just that
Despite the epic length, the track never drags or falters, increasing in furor just like the storm it references, bobbing and weaving like a prizefighter until its blistering conclusion.
After that, the album concludes with Mockingbird, a classic Tool troll track, sounding like a hellscape of bloodthirsty winged creatures that is clearly meant to test your patience.
If there’s one MVP on Fear Inoculum, it’s Carey. He has always been a monster behind the kit, but his work here is magisterial, athletic and takes the songs to places no other drummer could. Never content to rely on a basic 4/4 beat, his unique approach to tempo and his variety (and mastery) of a host of percussive instruments is truly jaw-dropping.
It’s impossible to know how long the wait will be for the next Tool album—if we ever get one. The band are now in their 50s, and have other passion projects to draw their interests and spirit. But Fear Inoculum, proves that their unique musical bond remains wonderfully intact. While it doesn’t have the immediacy of past watermarks like Aenema, it is steeped in all the band’s sonic signatures.
Keenan has described Fear Inoculum as such: I feel like this is [about] wisdom through age, through experience. And whether it thrills you or leaves you cold, one can’t listen to it without appreciating the weathered chops and dexterity that Tool offer at this stage in their career.
Event albums are few and far between these days, and this is the real deal. But Tool have no interest in making it easy for you. However, if you have the patience and curiosity, let the album’s labyrinthine soundscapes wash over you. It’s a worthy investment of your time–time always being the operative word in the world of Tool.
