Virtually everything about Tool suggests how not to have a successful career: taking 13 years between albums. Stationing its singer at the back of the stage throughout performances. Video imagery of human/alien hybrids and insects accompanied by lyrics often left open to interpretation, which can be risky when dealing with socially conscious issues and the state of the world. Not to mention, in this day and age, mostly forbidding your fans from capturing memories with their hand-held devices.
Not only does Tool have more than a knack for making it all work. But the spell by which the Los Angeles band binds its audience is more than welcome by the masses, which included last Friday’s sold-out 19,000-plus throng at the AT&T Center.
With veteran English supporters Killing Joke in tow, Tool returned to town on the strength of Aug. 30 release Fear Inoculum, its first album since 2006 and fifth overall spanning a 29-year career (see 48-photo slideshow below).
And things would be much different than most gigs before the first note was even played.
Patrons were advised a “no-camera” policy would be in full effect and violators would be expelled from the venue with no refund. Surprisingly, most everyone conformed, Refreshingly, when was the last time you attended a concert without someone blocking your view with their phone raised high — your childhood? Sadly, it had to be specially requested by the artist in the first place. Happily, the fans’ acceptance netted a reward at show’s end (more on that later).
And with that, a chime-like curtain with threaded openings surrounded the stage as drummer Danny Carey took his spot behind the kit sporting a Spurs uniform. The loud seal of approval came with fans not knowing, or caring, that an AT&T Center staff member had been summoned to grab a uniform from the gift shop, or that Carey has demonstrated the same fan-friendly gesture in other NBA cities on the tour. Moments later, guitarist Adam Jones and bassist Justin Chancellor began the first strums of the nearly 10 1/2-minute “Fear Inoculum.”
A spike Mohawked, leather jacket and plaid pants wearing vocalist Maynard James Keenan soon joined the fray, completing the band’s heavily regarded quartet as the arena erupted. Following the new title track, Keenan simply stated, “Texas,” and the crowd answered. Keenan followed up with, “That sounded more like Oklahoma. . . Texas!” The simplicity in crowd management combined with the complexity of his music captivated an audience glad to be swept under the hypnotic trance of the singer who also fronts A Perfect Circle and side project Puscifer.
Mixing in other new lengthy tracks “Pneuma” and “Invincible” with crowd favorites “Aenema,” “Schism” and “Intolerance,” Tool didn’t take nearly as long as the duration of its songs to cement its welcomed return to San Antonio. While Carey, Jones and Chancellor expertly kept things flowing with mesmerizing instrumental stretches during most tunes, Keenan would spend three or four songs at a time on one side of the stage across from Carey’s kit before making a slow, methodical walk to the other mic to benefit that side of the arena. The only time Keenan stepped down to the forefront was to playfully take a back-and-forth joyride on one of the equipment cases.
The big screen lit up the arena with Tool’s patented yet often impossible to explain video visuals, which properly served as a backdrop to the musicians more than as a distraction. A little more than two-thirds of the way through the show, rather than halfway, Tool went on a 12-minute intermission, communicated simply by way of a large countdown clock rather than by Keenan. Afterwards, Carey emerged in his Spurs uniform and banged a gong while embarking on his new instrumental “Chocolate Chip Trip.”
That paved the way for another new tune, “Invincible,” which left the standing crowd in anticipation of how the night would end. Keenan chose that moment to speak for only the second time of the two-hour, seven-minute performance: “Always a pleasure, Texas. Because you’ve been very good, you may now take out your phones. Check your email, Twitter, take photos. You kids and your phones.”
And with that, Tool unleashed classic “Stinkfist,” the AT&T Center lighting up in phone cameras and onlookers enraptured by the musical and visual exhibition. Again, the crowd roared as Tool’s members concluded their spectacle. Keenan matter-of-factly waved and departed by himself, but not before giving his bassist a slap on his rump.
As Chancellor,Jones and Carey tossed out picks and sticks, no one cared that Tool omitted its two biggest hits “Sober” and “Prison Sex,” or arguably the best song on the new album “7empest.” No one seemed to mind the test of how long they could go without using their phones. Instead, a crowd that was larger than even Iron Maiden’s “Legacy of the Beast” tour at the same venue exactly one month earlier could all agree: when it comes to Tool and its mystifying methods, the pieces fit.
