With Fear InoculumTool marks a return to business which leaves many questions unanswered…
In the category of laziness assimilated to metal (even if this last adjective has raised the hackles of the protagonists since day one – we pity the hair!), Tool will therefore have done better than Rammstein: thirteen years between two albums. Expectations were necessarily proportional to this prolonged silence.
Rewarded on arrival? Yes and no, almost inevitably, and this for a good reason: Tool has no use for what is projected onto him on the pretext that his music or his universe captivate as much (as much?) as they are draped in a skillfully maintained opacity. So no, this Fear Inoculum does not revolutionize anything “stylistically”, and is… reassuring in this sense: always its telluric riffs, always this drums and this hypnotic voice, serving cumulative strata, decanted at longer length here than average (all the “sung” pieces exceed ten minutes, interspersed with instrumental interludes which may make you wonder). For the rest, everything will only be a matter of interpretation which will remain unanswered in any case. Prayers or incantations? References to ancient Greece, Dune by Frank Herbert? Apocalyptic considerations and metaphors on humanity running to its doom or the state of mind of the group (these warriors returning to battle on “Descending”)? Maybe. Maybe not.
Tool continues to display his anxieties, his internal rage, his sometimes confused ambition, as captivating as it is exasperating to watch. And we will have to deal with it. Let’s inoculate ourselves with this somewhere…
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