PHOTOS: JULIA LOFSTRAND | Since the early ’90s when Tool arrived on the scene and had numerous labels fighting to sign them, they’ve become a band that has managed to have control over every aspect of their career. They have also retained the same lineup, with one small change when bassist Paul D’Amour was replaced by Justin Chancellor following the recording of their second album Ӕnima (1996).
Tool’s visual artist and guitarist Adam Jones said on a Tool Archive Q&A I heard that they’re just four different guys who don’t have a lot in common, but it’s more about what they do when they come together. Although each has gone off to work on side projects, they’ve never split up. The laborious recording process, the integration of his artwork, and fairness in splitting the band’s profits evenly are what he attributes to their success and longevity.
Lead singer Maynard James Keenan chooses tour openers who are distinctly different from Tool’s music with intention based on who he finds compelling. For Tuesday night’s show at the Honda Center, he chose ’90s No Wave/Dream Pop Blonde Redhead, “a band with a deep catalog for you to get lost into for years to come,” he mentioned on IG. Tool fans will likely find later openers The Acid Helps a more familiar space, but I enjoyed the feeling of the lucid suspension of time in Blonde Redhead’s music—something relatable to Tool.
In a culture that feeds off instant gratification, Tool’s music is anything but. It’s a slow coiling snake waiting to shed its skin—with long intervals in between album releases and tours. Their fans, patient and numerous, wrapped around the building among two unrelenting merch booth lines. I have never encountered a merch situation quite like this before.
Enshrouded in a long white fringe curtain, each band member was firmly positioned in place with a mohawked and black-eyed MJK behind drummer Danny Carey. A distant silhouette, his clear voice echoed like a cipher through the confusion, a space he’s inhabited since Tool’s inception. This placement, unusual for any lead singer, was driven by superior audio production but nevertheless contributed to Tool’s hermetical nature.
As blood red plastination images swept across the screens, I watched an early adolescent boy in the next row intently stare at the ground too frightened to look up, and quickly looking back down when he did. I was around the same age when I first encountered Tool and NIN videos on MTV’s 120 Minutes and flipped the channel unable to process their aggression and disturbing imagery. Their music, not a child’s garden, is where you go to find relatability when the exit from the womb has failed you. Tool’s violent, unadulterated escapist world is something I can appreciate now, but I wanted to wrap my arms around that boy.
There is something uniquely primitive about Tool’s music and their live shows. Through progressive rock structures they confront the world’s subconscious universal shadow in a complex algorithm where each member on stage is a master of his solitude, space, and instrument with none being perceived as more valuable than the other.
It’s truly a unique experience stemming from a respect for each other’s craft and the energy they receive from their fans. In the same Q&A video referenced earlier, guitarist Adam Jones explained how he gets choked up about the connection he feels with the fans when on stage. “It’s almost sexual. There is no sex but it’s intimate,” he said. I felt that energy. That they can capture the totality of the darkest areas of human existence through music and visual art, with such disturbing beauty, is why they remain relevant and current.
The setlist is also under MJK’s jurisdiction and is assembled based on what he feels he can emotionally bring to the night. If anyone hoped to hear their more known songs like “Sober,” “Stinkfist,” or “Forty Six & 2,” this wasn’t the show. It was deeper cuts from former albums and mostly songs from their last release Fear Inoculum (2019)—an album that MJK has said is about letting go of things that don’t matter.
BLONDE REDHEAD
