Tool

No I won't... As I said before I'll only have it when they release it on Vinyl. And I'd rather encourage leakers with stuff I know I'll buy later in physical support than give a cent to the Spotifies and iTunes of the world. I find both these platforms to be an utter disaster for musicians (unlike bandcamp as an example) but if people want to support it hey... it's up to each one. Unlike other members I prefer not to judge other people's decisions and can only state my position.
 
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I only listened to it a little bit. Some stuff is great, loved the rhythmically displaced guitar and bass in one song (it’s like phasing in minimalim). Some of it I found a bit lengthy (often I like lenghty stuff). Soundwise everything is perfectly captured, not very live, great bass tones, guitar sounds seem generally a bit too metal for what they’re doing imo, and I don‘t like the the programmed effects. Again, great bass!
I only listened a bit, so I might change my opinions.
 
Fear Inoculum didn’t disappoint me. I find its overall lyrical theme to be similar to that of APC’s “Eat the Elephant” in that it captures the zeitgeist of our progressively more socially disconnected and technologically reliant society.

My favorite tracks include Fear Inoculum (which took a few listens for me to get into) Pneuma (which I immediately liked), Invincible (my favorite vocals and lyrics-wise) as the top 3 standalone songs, with Descending, Culling Voices, and 7empest as a solid second tier, and the four instrumentals as worthwhile interludes but nothing I’d play out of context of listening to the whole album.

As they haven’t announced any tour dates in my city, I’m thinking of flying out to one of their weekend shows elsewhere.
 
After re visiting all their albums here's my Tool best of updated :

Fear Inoculum (10/10)
Pneuma (10/10)
Descending (10/10)
7empest (9.75/10)
Invincible (9.5/10)

Wings + 10000 days + Viginti Tres (10/10)
Right In Two (10/10)

The Grudge (10/10)
Lateralus (10/10)
Triad (10/10)
Schism (9.75/10)
The Patient (8.75/10)

Stinkfist (9.5/10)
Aenema (9.25/10)
Hooker With A Penis (9/10)
Jimmy (8.75/10)

Intolerance (8.5/10)
Prison Sex (8.5/10)

Sweat (8.5/10)

It's about time for me to accept it: Fear Inoculum is on the same level as Lateralus. The damn thing is simply a masterpiece and believe me... I'm not being a prisoner of some novelty sydrome. I've already listened to it a crapload of times and it just keeps on growing and growing. 10000 Days seems to lack more coherency between tracks this time although the mash up of the Wings trilogy and Right In Two continue to simply blow my mind. Lateralus continues to be Lateralus... enough said. Regarding Aenima I still think it's on hell of an album but when compared with Lateralus, Fear Inoculum or the Wings composition out of 10000 Days it seems to be a bit "predictable" (don't get me wrong... Aenima is waaaay far from square and basic. But that feeling alone is a testament to the trancendent aura that mainly Lateralus and their latest record emanate). Plus I rediscovered Jimmy... excelent track. My 2 favorite tracks out of Undertow remain the same and Opiate's Sweat came as that track that made me think "how did I never noticed how cool is this tune?".
 
Listening to Undertow.

Intolerance - pretty standard 90s rock song, reminds me of a lot of the bands that came after, like, say, Silverchair. That being said, 1993 predates that, so...congrats for inventing a boring sound? It was fine, 6/10.
Prison Sex - great name. I barely noticed the song was happening, though. 5/10.
Sober - A bit more of a thing going on here, but still in that very bland vein. Having a hard time telling some of this stuff apart. 6.5/10.
Bottom - Not a bad intro, actually. Though I am noticing that the drums seem a little simple and there's a very flat bass sound. Some really awkward guitar work near the end, but overall a much better song than the previous ones. Devolves a little at the end for a bit, before it picks back up with that end riff. 8/10, better.
Crawl Away - Kinda back to that bland sound. I mean it tries to get better but it really doesn't. 6/10.
Swamp Song - I dig the groove on this, but I kinda hate it when Keenan puts on that faux-blues sound in his voice. My head is nodding the whole time to the groove though. In fact, I'm not sure I like Keenan at all, bleh. Anyway 6.5/10.
Undertow - I can hear the differences in the way they play the sounds, but the sounds are all the same ones, just in slightly different order on each song. I thought this band was supposed to be progressive. Maybe the later albums show some of that. This song is very bleh, 5/10.
4° - A little more going on, then we retreat back to the same old riff, the same old bass sound. Maybe this is a better song than 5/10, maybe I'm just fatigued.
Flood - A little bit of a heavier intro, anyway. That's nice. But it's a loop. It's the same 30 seconds over and over again for the first half, seems to be an instrumental piece. Oh, no, just more than half instrumental, cool. Actually like this part a little more than previous, ok, this song is OK. 7/10.
Disgustipated - OK, so this one looks like it might be that long progressive piece I was interested in hearing. Interesting start, slow build, that's fine...then the lyrics come in? And now it's just weird, like a clock ticking, then back more intense...and now...crickets? WTF 10 minutes of crickets? 0/10 bait & switch.

So yes, let's see...that totals up to...55%.

This album predates, and clearly influenced, all the crappy alternative rock that pushed me out of the mainstream rock stream in the 1990s. Not a good album, with only one song I really liked. Everything else was bland and boring. I hope Tool gets better, but this doesn't make me want to listen to the next album.
 
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My opinion of Tool’s albums and individual songs changes over time.

Opiate: I didn’t like the EP on first listen, after having been first familiar with Undertow; hence, I never bought Opiate on cd. Upon revisiting it since its release in digital format, I particularly like Sweat and Opiate and find it a solid work overall. I don’t rate it amongst the full length albums.

Undertow: My first real exposure to Tool. Unfortunately, the first song I heard was Disgustipated, which a friend of mine wanted me to hear due to its iconoclasm, I guess. I thought “great, another novelty band (there were tons of those in the early 90’s like “Green Jello”)“. Once I heard the full album, my original opinion changed drastically and I became a fan. 4° remains one of my all time favorite Tool songs. I think Undertow has stood up over time much better than most early 90’s Prog/alt metal efforts from that era. I consider this record my second to least favorite Tool album and definitely prefer the direction Tool took after Justin Chancellor joined — but I don’t hate this album and listen to it more than Aenima.

Aenima: When this one was released, I immediately liked it and felt it made a fitting soundtrack to the angst I experienced in my early 20’s. Honestly, it’s now one of the Tool albums I revisit the least. Ænema, once one of my favorite Tool songs, is now relegated to full album listens. I still enjoy Forty Six & 2 and H. as standalone listens. Ironically, this went from being my favorite album by any band 23 years ago to being my least favorite full length Tool album (all things being relative here; it’s still a brilliant classic relative to other music).

Lateralus: My all time favorite Tool album. Parabol/Parabola went from being songs that I once gave only cursory regard to becoming my favorite Tool song combo. The Grudge, Schism, Lateralus, even Faiip De Oiad remain works I never get tired of. Ticks & Leeches is probably the only song on this album that I could never get into on the same level as the others.

10,000 Days: I got this as I was moving from cd to digital media around the time of its release and mostly focused on Vicarious, Jambi, and The Pot. Right in Two is a track that I can’t believe I’d ignored for so long. Overall, my third favorite Tool album.

Fear Inoculum: After 13 years of putting Tool and George RR Martin on my list of creatives who move too slowly to pay attention to, I’m putting this one right behind Lateralus as my favorite Tool album. The lyrics speak to my middle aged grumpiness much in the same way the album Aenima spoke to my young adult angst. I wrote my opinion on this album in another post but, generally, I enjoy these long songs that revolve between melody and martial sounding polyrhythms.
 
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LooseCannon said:
Listening to Undertow.

Intolerance - pretty standard 90s rock song, reminds me of a lot of the bands that came after, like, say, Silverchair. That being said, 1993 predates that, so...congrats for inventing a boring sound? It was fine, 6/10.
Prison Sex - great name. I barely noticed the song was happening, though. 5/10.
Sober - A bit more of a thing going on here, but still in that very bland vein. Having a hard time telling some of this stuff apart. 6.5/10.
Bottom - Not a bad intro, actually. Though I am noticing that the drums seem a little simple and there's a very flat bass sound. Some really awkward guitar work near the end, but overall a much better song than the previous ones. Devolves a little at the end for a bit, before it picks back up with that end riff. 8/10, better.
Crawl Away - Kinda back to that bland sound. I mean it tries to get better but it really doesn't. 6/10.
Swamp Song - I dig the groove on this, but I kinda hate it when Keenan puts on that faux-blues sound in his voice. My head is nodding the whole time to the groove though. In fact, I'm not sure I like Keenan at all, bleh. Anyway 6.5/10.
Undertow - I can hear the differences in the way they play the sounds, but the sounds are all the same ones, just in slightly different order on each song. I thought this band was supposed to be progressive. Maybe the later albums show some of that. This song is very bleh, 5/10.
4° - A little more going on, then we retreat back to the same old riff, the same old bass sound. Maybe this is a better song than 5/10, maybe I'm just fatigued.
Flood - A little bit of a heavier intro, anyway. That's nice. But it's a loop. It's the same 30 seconds over and over again for the first half, seems to be an instrumental piece. Oh, no, just more than half instrumental, cool. Actually like this part a little more than previous, ok, this song is OK. 7/10.
Disgustipated - OK, so this one looks like it might be that long progressive piece I was interested in hearing. Interesting start, slow build, that's fine...then the lyrics come in? And now it's just weird, like a clock ticking, then back more intense...and now...crickets? WTF 10 minutes of crickets? 0/10 bait & switch.

So yes, let's see...that totals up to...55%.

This album predates, and clearly influenced, all the crappy alternative rock that pushed me out of the mainstream rock stream in the 1990s. Not a good album, with only one song I really liked. Everything else was bland and boring. I hope Tool gets better, but this doesn't make me want to listen to the next album.
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You'd probably like Aenema more. Perfect mix of metal and progressive music. Undertow is easily the worst album, but through years of listening to it I've learned to appreciate it.
 
I honestly didn’t get much of a difference between Undertow and Ænima, although they’re definitely a step up as far as musicianship goes with the latter. Honestly so far “Sober” is the only song worth coming back to for me and it doesn’t even work well on the album it’s on. Only when I play it by itself am I able to enjoy it.
 
Tool is one of those bands where after you’ve heard one song you’ve heard them all and their sound is definitely dated (which is why I’m still surprised they’re doing the same thing more or less in 2019).

That being said, Aenima and Lateralus are very good albums (or halves of good albums). Good songwriting, nice energy, and they managed to make some already established ideas sound fresh.
 
Diesel 11 said:
I honestly didn’t get much of a difference between Undertow and Ænima, although they’re definitely a step up as far as musicianship goes with the latter. Honestly so far “Sober” is the only song worth coming back to for me and it doesn’t even work well on the album it’s on. Only when I play it by itself am I able to enjoy it.
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To my ears, Ænima has more melodic guitar parts and bouncier bass lines than Undertow (which was more riff and slog based). It’s also where Tool first experimented with doing interludes between songs, a trend that I’m glad they went more instrumental vs. comedic with in later works.


Edit: is the Tool-critical part of this thread mostly a wind up/in-group joke?
 
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Nodding Donkey said:
Edit: is the Tool-critical part of this thread mostly a wind up/in-group joke?
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No. I haven't listened to much Tool in my life, so I figured that them going on Spotify & releasing a new album was a good opportunity to dive in and see what all the fuss is about. The first album didn't click with me, let's put it that way.
 
LooseCannon said:
No. I haven't listened to much Tool in my life, so I figured that them going on Spotify & releasing a new album was a good opportunity to dive in and see what all the fuss is about. The first album didn't click with me, let's put it that way.
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To each their own. Aenima might not change your mind and you may want to skip ahead to Lateralus. If you don’t like that, there’s a strong chance you’ll not like anything else by Tool. Undertow is an outlier in their overall catalogue, with Aenima as an incrementally proggier shift.

To one of your comments, I don’t think Tool can accurately be lumped in with 90’s alt-rock or really inspired much in that genre (if you mean Silverchair, Live, Filter, Chevelle, etc) and their early work can only marginally be lumped in with nu-metal like Korn, Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson, et al. From Lateralus onward, Tool had evolved into more of a heavier version of King Crimson (without sounding like the latter).
 
Tool is definitely more King Crimson than Pink Floyd. I feel like anyone calling them a Metal Pink Floyd isn't really all that familiar with one or both of the two groups. The relationship between King Crimson and Tool is so close that I'm surprised there isn't more crossover. They pretty much took the torch from KC, who were slowing down in the 90s. Same emphasis on polyrhythms, experimental rock jams, angular riffing. Pink Floyd is much more mellow, psychedelic, and spacey. There are very few similarities.

You could maybe make the comparison between Floyd and APC but even that doesn't seem quite right. BTW I find APC to be much more interesting than Tool.
 
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