Style: progressive rock/metal, alternative, tribal ambient (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: boring Karnivool I guess
Review by: Sam
Country: California, United States
Release date: 30 August, 2019
[Editor’s note: this review was originally published in the August 2019 edition of The Progressive Subway.]
A few months ago I found a song called “Fear Inoculum” by some band named “Tool” buried in r/progmetal/new. It barely had any upvotes (didn’t even surpass my shitty prog metal guide no one liked), but it seemed decent enough to bookmark. I’ve found some real gems in that abyss (Daydream XI for example turned out to be my AotY 2017). It turned out this was a band that has been going on for quite a while (debut was in 1993), and that this was a single of their first new album in 13 years. This made me slightly concerned. A band that has stayed so far underground for so long has probably not made any commercial headway for a reason, right?
Well, I was right. This record is completely, utterly awful. Like, would you take a look at those song lengths? Yeah sure it screams “prog”, but it also screams of a band that tries really hard to convince the public of how intelligent they are to hide a lack of actually interesting ideas and self-editing. Six songs over 10 minutes just screams pretentiousness. Not every band can be Ne Obliviscaris, and even then Portal of I feels bloated at times. But wait, aren’t there 10 songs? Yeah that’s right 4 of those are interludes. Luckily, Tool at least had some wisdom not to include 3 of them on the actual CD as they were simply too freaking boring. Unfortunately, us Spotify listeners have to sit through the drag. Terrible marketing if you ask me. They’re making it even less likely for someone to buy the CD.
But bloated songwriting wouldn’t even be the biggest crime in the world if they actually had some interesting ideas. Sadly they have none. They try to be atmospheric and “groovy”, but fail miserably at both. Take their guitarist: all he does is weird guitar effects over mindless chugging for 86 minutes. They’re not tasteful, they just come off as a boomer trying to relive the djent movement 10 years after the fact. Everyone has long since moved on from that. Speaking of boomers: that singer, Oh. My. God. Maynard is his name apparently. He sounds like someone made a fusion of Ian Kelly from Karnivool and Serj Tankian from System of a Down, but sacrificed most of their singing abilities for a huge load of angry boomer energy. He’s that grandpa who sends you memes stolen from r/FellowKids in an attempt to be cool, and then gets angry when you tell him how bad his meme game is. And did you look at those lyrics? Putting in some spirituality and psychedelics isn’t gonna make a difference to the music you know. At most you’ll attract some angsty teenagers that are too insecure about their own intellect, so they think citing pseudo-intellectual nonsense will make them look smart.
The only thing slightly redeemable about this record is that their drummer is not a total Tool (pun intended). He sometimes comes up with some semi-interesting fills and grooves. However, if you look closer, you’ll see that behind this veil of fake competence he’s actually just a (relative) Lars Ulrich discount version of Baardt Kolstad (Leprous, Rendezvous Point). Again, just another angry boomer trying to replicate what’s cool and failing miserably.
So then we reach the conclusion. I think it’s safe to say that Tool has stayed underground for a reason all those years. This album is the epitome of r/FellowKids, except that no one there has heard about them. I don’t recommend this to anyone unless you think that an angry boomer version of Karnivool with extra pseudo-intellectual nonsense is something that’ll make you happy.
Recommended tracks: yeah uhhh nah bruh
You may also hate: Simulacra, Culak
Final verdict: 1/10
(NB: this review was a joke. Tool is the most commercially successful prog metal (related) band ever so I thought including their first album in 13 years on a blog about the most obscure stuff out there was a fun idea. If you wanna read my actual thoughts on the album, read this review on sputnik.)
Related links: Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
Label: RCA Records – Facebook | Official Website
Tool is:
– Maynard James Keenan (vocals)
– Adam Jones (guitar)
– Justin Chancellor (bass)
– Danny Carey (drums)
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