On Aug. 30, one of rock music’s biggest acts put out its first album in 13 years. Since 1992, the band Tool has only released five albums and an EP, so its intensely loyal fans, who span a shockingly wide group of musical interests and demographics, are used to long waits for new material. Still, after 13 years, the anticipation was off the charts.
Or rather, the anticipation has put the band back on the charts. The eponymous first single off of Fear Inoculum broke into Billboard’s Hot 100 when it was released ahead of the album in early August. The fact that a multi-platinum rock band has a song on the Hot 100 normally doesn’t mean much. But Tool never does things the easy way. At 10 minutes and 21 seconds, Fear Inoculum has the distinction of being the longest song to ever crack Billboard’s charts.
For the uninitiated, Tool sounds a bit like the bastard child of Metallica and prog-rock icons King Crimson. But it’s difficult to pin the band down except to say that they are impressive musicians — drummer Danny Carey can frequently be spotted playing jazz at the beloved L.A. musicians’ hangout The Baked Potato — who write exceedingly complex music. In the process of transcribing their song Schism, a British guitar magazine noted that the song changes time signatures a whopping 47 times.
Such timing should produce a confusing mess, yet it’s arguably Tool’s most popular song to date. The song is built around an ominous-but-catchy bass hook by Justin Chancellor. It won the band the 2002 Grammy for Best Metal Performance and hit No. 2 on the alternative rock charts. The complexity is a feature, not a bug: Every musical choice Tool makes is intentional and cohesive. The record Schism appeared on, Lateralus, is notable because the band derived a number of the song structures from mathematical formulas, such as the Fibonacci sequence.
In fact, it’s the band’s attention to such minutiae that’s partly responsible for its long record drought. The band is also known for its haunting visual aesthetics and highly symbolic record packaging. Until the last few months, Tool kept its music off of streaming services in order to make confronting the meticulous artwork a part of the listening experience. But in 2007, a friend of the band sued, claiming he was not credited for artwork he had created. The band brought in its insurance company to defend them from the lawsuit, and the insurance company turned around and also sued the band over technicalities regarding the case. The result was a multi-level, multimillion dollar lawsuit that cost the band dearly and kept them out of the studio and off the road for years. Tool won the lawsuit after eight years of delays and legal battles, but it still exacted a tremendous toll.
The other big challenge for the band seemed to be corralling Tool’s lead singer, Maynard James Keenan. Since 1999, he’s taken advantage of Tool’s long hiatuses between records and joined the multiplatinum supergroup A Perfect Circle, where the rotating band members have included musicians from The Smashing Pumpkins and Queens of the Stone Age. He’s also part of a lesser known third band, Pucsifer, that actively records and tours. As if music weren’t enough, Keenan owns vineyards and is a bit of a wine impresario in his native Arizona.
As the album neared completion, Keenan and the rest of the band were communicating with each other through public statements that hinted at tensions within the band over when Keenan would finally get into the studio and do his vocals. But it might be a mistake to read too much into what was going on inside the band. Keenan radiates intensity, and just about everything that comes out of his mouth is designed to be challenging, if not overtly confrontational.
Keenan is a bit of a unicorn, an opinionated rock star who’s actually worth listening to. He’s a regular guest on Joe Rogan’s hugely popular podcast, and while his opinions may be frequently disagreeable, he’s a genuine freethinker, and what comes out of his mouth is usually damned interesting. Musically, Keenan might be the band’s saving grace. He uses his powerful voice to great effect, sustaining long, consistent melodic lines that make the band’s baroque musicality somehow palatable to a wide audience. And it doesn’t hurt that he tempers the band’s penchant for esoteric names and themes with lyrics that touch on more relatable issues, such as insecurity and addiction.
The success of Tool despite the setbacks, unyielding personalities, and unwillingness to compromise its artistic vision also provides some lessons for the foundering record industry.
Tool rose to fame nearly three decades ago, at a time in which the sales of physical albums provided more than enough cash for record companies to provide visionary, and yes, difficult artists with the resources they needed to make truly groundbreaking records. The return of Tool inevitably raises a worrying question for music fans: Is the music industry, at a time when radio is in serious decline and streaming services have dramatically reduced revenue, even capable of nurturing new artists who take rock music to the next level?
The market for guitar rock has been dwindling significantly in the 13 years since Tool last put out a record. But the instant success of Fear Inoculum makes a powerful case that one reason for this is that rock bands haven’t been nearly ambitious or innovative enough.
Mark Hemingway is a writer in Alexandria, Virginia.
