Thoughts on: Tool – Fear Inoculum

I was six years old when 10,000 Days came out, so I don’t really have the right to complain about having to wait thirteen years for this.

Fear Inoculum is Tool’s most meditative, spiritual, and God-like album yet and caps the end of their enlightening discography. Ænima ascends to as high of a peak as possible without losing the darkness found in early Tool. Lateralus loses a lot of anger, ups the spirituality, adds more LSD and achieves enlightenment. 10,000 Days circles back around from the metaphysical to the here and now of our lives and, using this newfound enlightenment, allows itself to heal our inscrutable humanity. Now, Fear Inoculum revels in this higher dimension of consciousness, having finally become content with one’s self and the surrounding Universe.

What I just wrote sounds pretentious as fuck, but that’s okay when you’re dealing with a work this good. No one bats an eye when you start going all philosophical about Hamlet or something, but when treating a metal album that raises it’s own wealth of profound observations (and even quotes Hamlet’s famous line) your labeled as a pretentious tard with a shitty taste in music. The point is is that this new Tool album is awesome and I expected nothing less from this incredible band. I’ll be honest, when I first heard the title track released a few weeks before the album, it didn’t impress me very much. But overtime I realized what the song was conveying and perfectly predicted the direction the new album was taking. In a world that feels like it’s getting close to snapping from all the frustration and unrest, this work is a much needed breather. It is, without a doubt, Tool’s most positive work, completely purging itself from the darkness found in the rest of the discography. Going back and listening to Ænima and hearing that evolution is shocking, as songs like “Hooker With A Penis” when compared to a song like “Pneuma” gives off such a different vibe that they could’ve been written by two different bands. Granted, Tool is a different band now. Maynard, Adam, Danny, and Justin all feel very comfortable and they’ve managed to capture that humble lifestyle into an hour and a half metal album that is never boring or uninspired.

Musically, this is an instrumentally driven album with Adam Jones on guitar front and center. Danny Carey on drums is back there doing his polyrhythmic thing while Justin Chancellor continues to melt faces with the most pronounced bass I’ve ever heard, although I really wish he shared some more focus. There isn’t a “Forty Six and Two”, “Schism” or “The Pot” equivalent on this album and that’s a damn shame. Maynard James Keenan on vocals feels absent, which is my biggest complaint about the album. It’s clear to me Maynard wasn’t apart of the songwriting process very much, as his vocals feel more layered on top of the instrumentation as opposed to integrated. Also, especially on the title track, his voice and lyrics sound a lot like the latest A Perfect Circle record, which isn’t his best work. He’s still great though and the song “Culling Voices” demonstrates his natural inclinations as a singer.

While I talked about Fear Inoculum’s role in Tool’s artistic progression in the first paragraph, I don’t see this album being mentally lumped in with the past three albums. It’s too different and stands on its own merit. It sounds too critical to state that this album isn’t as good as those three, and the observation itself is inherently surface level which I dislike, but no one will be debating if this album has the potential to knock Lateralus off the pedestal of being the best metal album of the 21st Century. That does not undermine this album’s achievements AT ALL, for it is not only a different work with a different purpose, but is gorgeously crafted itself. Is The Persistence of Memory really more of a visual masterpiece than The Hallucinogenic Toreador? What’s more impressive is that the same artist was able to create both.

Listening to this album is like your brain being vaporized into gas and as it flows out your ears in turns into a galaxy that surrounds you. What else has that effect on someone who is sober? I recommend this album to everybody. Listen to it, and while you’re there, listen to Tool’s entire discography. It’s on Spotify now!