Fear Inoculum; A long wait for a bus that doesn't come

Tool, and Maynard James Keenan by extension, was a major part of my musical education and upbringing. At a time when the airwaves and my buddy’s CD players were blasting such acts as Korn, Blink-182, and Incubus, it was hard to cultivate my own identity as a “Rocker-But-Also-A-Nerd.” Enter the prog-metal. Tool was an alternative to the overbearing and jokey antics of acts like Disturbed and Slipknot; the music was also a tad more melodic and interesting, albeit still depressing and gothic in aesthetic. I was obsessed for a time. I admit fully to delving ‘down the spiral’ of Lateralus’ alternate track sequence (inspired by the fibonacci sequence) and to playing Aenima on repeat (‘Hooker with a Penis’ was my meta-jam for years). 

However, we all grow up and our tastes do evolve. I moved onto more energetic groups like The Mars Volta (which deserve their own post in their own right). I found myself drawn to the more wilder sounds of psychedelic jam bands and their chaos-flavored palettes. I became a student of classic rock megaliths like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, who showed me that Tool wasn’t the first band who had a sense of atmosphere. I began to lose the ‘metal’, focusing more on the ‘prog’ aspect, leading me into bands like Yes and King Crimson. The further into music I got, the more I realized that most musical ideas are simply re-interpretations of something from the past, and I began to become disenchanted with the bands of my upbringing.

Meanwhile, streaming services became a thing. The rise of Pandora (and subsequent services based on such) changed the way we listen to music entirely. I could suddenly hunt down whatever track I was after, entirely on demand. I didn’t have to risk downloading from a shady p2p, I could construct custom playlists made of my own varied tastes, and I could finally catch up on the dozens of albums I could never afford but desperately needed to experience. It was a streaming renaissance, and I loved it.

Except Tool was missing.

For whatever reason (money) Maynard and the gang chose to keep their stuff OFF of streaming services for years and years. While I was in the height of a streaming dream, one of my favorite childhood bands preferred to keep their names off the internet and out of our mouths. Even after Metallica folded and began to stream, Tool were still several years away from joining the club. 

That’s fine, whatever, artists deserve to do what they like about how they release their own music. I just don’t understand the logic behind the move, since there have now been 13 years since the last Tool album; an entire generation of angsty teens have been utterly deprived of experiencing their music. New listeners aren’t going to go out of their way to buy a CD that only their parents are excited about, and Tool certainly isn’t on the radio anymore. Without streaming, how does the band expect to garner new listeners?

Well, someone in the band must have realized this issue, because guess what? In 2019, they finally decided to release their catalog on Spotify. Cool, huh?... Well, not to this ex-fan.

Look, it’s all well and good to join the streaming game and FINALLY show fans that you actually want them to listen to your music and share it with your friends, but if it’s literally only because you are putting an album out after an interminable wait and you realized that NO ONE would be interested unless you at least ACTED like you cared about the current way music is consumed by your fans, then it really just feels like a slap in the face. I cannot fathom the hubris that would allow someone to not only ignore but to actively talk shit about their own fanbase for 10+ years, then jump onto a bandwagon that’s left the station ages ago just to hawk their lack-luster product at a confused and aging demographic that had all-but-forgotten who the hell they were.

And the album really IS lack-luster. It meanders, every song is about 2 minutes too long, and at best, it simply evokes soundscapes that they’ve done better on past albums. Less than a real album, it feels like a romp through nostalgia soaked depression, kinda like watching The Goonies while drinking cough syrup and ruminating on the fate of the Cory’s. Who even asked for this?

Compare to 2017’s Polygondwanaland, by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. True, Poly is more experimental psych prog than metal, but structurally many parts of the album are comparative to the tricks in Tool’s bag, both musically and architecturally. It flows from track to track, has a metaphysical component, and a deep message. It is also the 4th of 5 albums Gizz put out that year, and they made it FULLY free; open source, no copyright, free to the world to republish any way they want. And it is GOOD. More than that, it serves as an act of love, a gesture to the fanbase and to the world that ultimately, money be damned, music deserves to be heard by everyone. Not just by those able or willing to pay, not just by those who only listen to it a certain way, and not just by fans who’ve managed to keep a candle burning for 13 years despite obvious and public disdain.