Tool takes us into a dreamlike and cerebral dimension
“Fear inoculum” to date it is the last album of the Tools. It was published five years ago, on August 30, 2019, coming thirteen years after “10,000 days” (read the review here). The album reached the top of the sales charts in the United States. The meaning of its title was explained in an interview by the band’s bassist Justin Chancellor. “‘Fear Inoculum’ is about getting vaccinated against the things that scare you. When you grow up you want to learn, you want to change and evolve, but you don’t want to live in fear. Fear annihilates thought.” This is the review of the album that he wrote for us Andrea Valentini.
Habemus album. It took 13 years and a lot of false starts (“the album is coming – sorry, actually” or something like that), but finally Tool’s new studio work sees the light. Luckily Keenan and his guys don’t give us their very own “Chinese Democracy” (Guns took 15 years to do it, fans a month to forget it: now you can say it, right?): in fact it’s clear that the answer to the question of whether the long wait was worth it is positive. Without hesitation or doubt. The elephantine gestation of “Fear Inoculum”, therefore, is easily forgotten in the span of listening to the first track, because Tool manage to transport us with ease into a dimension that is dreamlike and cerebral at the same time, in which the sound commands with the sensations it manages to transmit. And everything else doesn’t matter anymore: it is inundated and rinsed away by a tide of stimuli based on alt metal, prog, art rock and psychedelia.
This is an album that is certainly faithful to the name and fame of Tool, but while not bringing blasphemous upheavals to their sound, it shows a change of direction, a sort of evolution-progression towards new shores. And there are several clues to prove it. Let’s start with the fact that this is the longest album the band has ever recorded: about 85 minutes spread across just seven tracks (the digital version also includes three interludes not included on the CD). The longest – the final “7empest” – takes up 15’44”, all the others have a duration varying between 10 and a good 13 minutes (only one doesn’t reach 5: “Chocolate Chip Trip”, which someone has already compared, for mood and sound, to the best of Nine Inch Nails).
In practice, each piece is a sort of suite, a work in itself with a very prog feel, at times evocative of the Grateful Dead jam spirit – but transported to the planet Tool, without the freakiness, faded T-shirts and all the hippie paraphernalia. Then there are the synths and keyboards, which this time make themselves heard massively in all the songs: they create melodies, fill voids, give depth and atmosphere… in short, they are used in a way that gives a surprising new color to the Tool sound. Since we’re on the subject (with the synths), it’s impossible not to notice how this new album has a very digital, very modern sound. Everything is crystallinely clean and pure: no hum from the amp tubes, no ambient noise, no smudges… the precision and clarity are surgical (after all, the single-title track had fully anticipated it).
To conclude with the presentation of the evidence to the Court and Jury, the subject of melody remains to be addressed.
Despite the extreme distance from pop or commercial shores, it is undeniable that in Fear Inoculum there is a vein that makes the songs paradoxically “accessible”, despite their complexity and articulation. As Keenan sings in “7empest”, “A tempest must be true to its nature / A tempest must be just that” (“A storm must be true to its nature / A storm must just be a storm”, freely translated). And Tool, like the storm, did exactly that. Because it was the only thing to do. The result is “Fear Inoculum”, a dense album that grows with repeated listening. But also a record that strikes at first impact, like a dart with a hooked tip. Welcome back.
