![]() ![]() Ten minutes of vicious lullaby, it only really becomes a regular Tool song in its final five minutes. Tool have always opened their records with a whisper rather than a bang, but ‘Fear Inoculum’ takes the slow-burn start to the next level. Keep halving the distance, and you’ll never reach the other side of the room. In which Tool stray into nu-metal, if only in the space of the first thirty seconds or so. But in actual fact, in its elegant simplicity, ‘Culling Voices’ is proof that bands do not need to reinvent their own wheel in order to stay great. It’s an itemised list of Tool tropes that slowly buckles under its own weight. The Fear Inoculum track that most obviously apes past glories, ‘Culling Voices’ is as throwback as they come. What other band takes the first four long minutes of their song to get going? And what other band goes this hard when they do? #35. Maynard might be the only man in rock who can make the words ‘push it’ sound quite so intoxicating. ![]() The most baroque single that the band ever released, ‘Pushit’ is as ornate as a skull studded with jewels - this deadly, beautiful thing. But ‘Disposition’ sees the band at their most reflective, flirting with a conclusion they never reach while repeating the same chorus over and over again, like a koan. Tool’s melancholic side is always the one most neglected by the press - their reputation is as a band of sickos, not mournful poets. Imagine being that “Bob Marley wannabe motherfucker” that gets thrown out of the concert at the start of ‘Cold and Ugly’. Tool are usually the masters of the slow build, but ‘Triad’ starts dialled up to 11 and remains there for the next seven-odd minutes. Only Maynard could write a five-minute song dedicated to the art of being a colossal shithead. Sure, it’s a far cry from their weirdest output. The closest Tool have ever come to writing a by-the-numbers metal song, ‘Bottom’ is a sturdy, handsome piece of work. But whatever the words mean, the way he sings them will imprint them on the back of your brain. “ Two times in I’ve been struck dumb by a voice that / Speaks from deep beneath the endless water,” might be the most stereotypical burst of Tool-branded surrealism that’s come out of Manyard’s mouth yet. The favourite song of high school maths teachers the world over. It does have pockets that feel ever so slightly rote, none of which are helped by the bloated length - there’s a ten minute version of this song out there somewhere that’s about ten times better.īut still, even Keenan at his least concise has a power other musicians could only dream of. ![]() One of the longest tracks on Tool’s long-awaited and surprisingly good Fear Inoculum, ‘Descending’ has all the complexity and wry meanness that you’d expect from the band. ‘Chocolate Chip Trip’ĭo you think those are Maynard’s wind chimes at the beginning there? #46. The gentle muzak that you hear piped through a massage parlour, as re-recorded by Satan. It’s kinda funny, I guess, but it’s the kind of punchline that’s less and less appealing the more you think about it. Not much more than an elaborate prank, ‘Die Eier von Satan’ is a weed cookie recipe translated into German and made to sound as comically threatening as possible. It’s not bad, exactly, but it certainly feels like it ever-so-slightly overstates itself, particularly with that ornate, flowery chorus. Like Tool tried to write a showtune from a musical about rot. ![]() It’ll get under your skin, and do terrible things there. Maybe the most insidious of all of Tool’s little inter-album skits, ‘Message to Harry Manback’ is a noirish, gilded threat. ![]()
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