Tool are just King Crimson in Joker makeup. They thrive in an enormously popular world of polyrhythms and prurience; of Jungian philosophy and Bill Hicks memes; of pewter dragon statues with orbs in their mouths and guys telling you that DMT is actually a chemical in your brain. Forged in the mad-at-my-dad fires of ’90s post-grunge and nu-metal, the progressive metal quartet has sustained a decades-long career on equal parts technical precision and psychedelic bullshit. Their multi-part songs are loosely about embracing pain, grief, desire, transgression, until all your chakras are open and you know exactly why the pieces fit. They’ve been a punchline for years.
But ever since hiding a song at track 69 of their 1993 debut album, Tool have always been sort of in on the joke. A song on their second album Ænima dramatically recited the recipe for weed cookies in German, they have pulled many exhausting April Fool’s jokes on their fans, including one that claimed they were in a horrible bus accident and one that stated the famously apostatical lead singer Maynard James Keenan had quit the band and found Jesus. It’s just that these edgy, twisted, “funny” parts of Tool are empirically stupid. Sure, Keenan has a versatile, emotive voice that granted Tool an audience beyond metalheads. But what he’s actually singing about is and has always been the province of pseudo-spiritual stoners and gamer intellectualism. You see, “Forty Six & 2” is about the Jungian concept of the shadow, and “Rosetta Stoned” is about tripping out and seeing aliens. His trickster humor has curdled of late, culminating in Keenan writing a song in response to a bad Yelp review about his winery.
In recent years, Keenan has spoken to the press far more about his Arizona winery than Tool’s music. (Keenan is a very serious winemaker who, nevertheless, named his vineyard after a pubic wig.) Recording sessions for the band’s fifth album, Fear Inoculum, revolved around his grape harvesting schedule. His wine, his other bands Puscifer and A Perfect Circle, and his restless and enigmatic nature are, in part, the reasons behind the 13-year break between now and Tool’s previous album, 10,000 Days, a gap made almost mythic by the band’s absence from streaming services until earlier this year. The band’s discography roared back into the digital marketplace, smashing Billboard records in the process. Fear Inoculum arrives at a moment of high demand for Tool’s music, filling a vacuum they themselves created.