To my small circle of friends growing up, Maynard James Keenan was more than just a musical genius that could belt out a wide range of vocals; he was a prophet. An undeserving pedestal for anyone – even those that would reject the crown. The first person to ever play Tool for me prefaced it with a somber expression and told me that the lead singer, Maynard, was dying of AIDS that he contracted from a dirty needle. There was absolutely no evidence of this, but when 14-year-old me listened to Ænema, it was impossible for me to deny the salacious rumor; the music itself was heroin, and the lyrics crept out of isolated darkness between the riffs. Here was a band where all their sounds were equal, where the feeling itself came from the combination. It was Rock that had to be listened to, re-listened to, poured over, something to obsess over.
The first primal scream came with Opiate. Like an infant breathing for the first time, it was a harsh reaction to a cold world consumed with religion and hatred. In a childish outburst, each track builds on the rage of the one before it so much like the young man I was growing to be. By that age, I was eager to experience alternative mindsets, to see the world through a lens that hadn’t been mucked up with Heaven/Hell or the church-induced guilt complex that I had lived up until then. The title track always came off to me as an angry, and it was a staple of my Sunday afternoons for that reason.
By Undertow, it was clear to me that Tool was what I had been searching for in music my whole life. It was the grimy basslines of “Swamp Song,” though an empowering mysticism, which made you feel like you were a part of a secret that few were in on. Tool fans were more than fans. They believed in the angsty musings of one Maynard James Keenan. His words sent us to the bookstore in search of philosophies, opened doors in our mind to embrace independence from a dimming society, and general wisdom that even though we were outcasts, we could find comfort amongst our own.
On September 12th, 2001, like the rest of the world, I was still in a state of utter shock, but I was ready for my first Tool concert. It was going to soothe my confusion. Then they canceled the show for what I’m sure were security concerns. It wasn’t until two days later I stood in Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio listening to the opening of their set with goosebumps that I would begin to understand how much their music was shaping me.
They played a fantastic set that included a rarely performed – and eerily relevant – rendition of the apocalyptic track Enema. After it ended, Maynard began to reference the attacks. Keep in mind that during this time, everyone was hopped up on patriotism and filled with a rage that only comes from being the most powerful nation in the world set on vindication. His small mention prompted even the long-haired crowd to chants of USA, USA, USA! It was a togetherness that was being fostered by non-stop media coverage and flags selling like hotcakes for the price of a dollar-O-nine. America was loading its weapons and setting its sights on whoever was to blame. To the chants, Maynard was as dismissive as you’d expect a Rock God to be.
“Chant all you want, but we just got our asses kicked.”
It was a dose of realism that floated over the crowd that night and burrowed deep into the hearts of the teenagers who watched the towers fall on TV. Like always, he was saying America wasn’t the invisible superpower our parents made it out to be. We should be humbled and not turn it into something that encouraged the worst parts of us.
The show was a spectacle with performers, lights, screens, and every bit as cool as it was hyped to be. My friends and I drank it all in and spent the night free of the horrors of the past week. We were, in our small collective, an invisible superpower by ourselves.
The new millennium was turning into one of endless war profiteering and stale rock music that featured bland songs about bland people living dull lives. Reality television was taking its hold on every network. Bloodlust was numbing us, and worst of all, we only encouraged more.
In Spring of 2006, my generation was staring down the barrel of an oncoming recession. We all held our breath as our government prepared to destroy the world to satisfy our need for security, we neither needed nor desired. Our friends had been sent thousands of miles from our mini-malls and ice cream parlors, and some never came back. The wounds looked like they’d never heal; kids would keep dying, the war would keep going as long as companies made more money from conflict than peace.
Our vengeance was becoming a voyeuristic fantasy come to life. From our homes, again, families watched as the entire world died. While driving to my shitty job, the beginning lines of what is the unmistakable sign of Tool’s production signaled the arrival of the new single: Vicarious. I pulled over to the side of the road and let it sink in. Of course, it was eerily like what my friends and I had talked about for hours in coffee shops that we treated as makeshift salons for what we saw as intellectualism. It spoke the truths that we were slowly fostering from the ashes of our parent’s religious zealotry.
The song, well-received by even hardcore fans, was nothing less than a seven and a half-minute rant about selfish Americanism. On April 20th, by the grace of an unnamed accomplice, I got my hands on a silver blank CD. After a hard night of partying, my friends and I crossed the street and sat down in front of my stereo.
The first track was the aforementioned Vicarious, and everyone agreed how neat it was to have the new Tool single on a compact disk. But at the finality of Vicarious, a very magical thing happened: Jambi. We had all our collections of B-sides, live tracks, and unreleased demos that we had downloaded. Each of us had a hard drive worth (according to the record executives) millions of dollars of stolen music, movies, and comics. It was a theft that was so common; some even envisioned a day where one might download a car.
The opening riff of a Tool song none of them had heard yet shut us all up. My friend had hooked me up with the new Tool album, and all of us sat motionlessly through those mystical 75 minutes. It was a story of pain. Maynard describing his mother’s struggle was the closest thing we had heard from Tool to a coherent, non-mystical theme. America was living its 10,000 days. It was a stark vision of fools following leaders to places of festering hatred that blinds them from seeing what damage they’re doing to themselves and others.
It was a story of pain. Maynard describing his mother’s struggle was the closest thing we had heard from Tool to a coherent, non-mystical theme. America was living its 10,000 days.
Eight days later, every single one of us went to the store and purchased the album. The packaging was enterprising, hailed at the time as something special in a market where the physical copy was disappearing. Even though I could still listen to it whenever I wanted from the stolen copy, I shared that deep need to place it on the shelf next to the rest of the Tool albums.
As if a new child had come home to the hospital, and its rightful place was with its family.
Growing up with classic rock fanatics, I’ve always heard them talk about finding an album that changed their life. They sat at home with giant headphones on, listening to the record over and over. The music and lyrics of Tool’s 10,000 Days is the closest to that feeling I will ever have. For eight days, I had known this. For eight days, it was the only thing playing in the kitchen where I worked and the car stereos of every car we drove. As of writing this, it is still unknown who leaked the album, but in 2006, we were quickly growing into an America where anything could happen, and if it happened sooner, all the better.
Four thousand, eight hundred and seventy-two days after their last release, Tool finally put out another album: Fear Inoculum.
The previous entries to this series dealt with the nostalgia of yesteryear angst and the influence that angst had on me and my friends.
My love for Tool’s music was always built upon the image of a band growing, experimenting, testing the waters of another universe, and telling of its splendors. Songs that were small vignettes into the pain of other strange beings, mythical expressions of higher platitudes, all filled my mind with imaginative and freeing dreams that are nowhere to be found on this album.
There are no new outlooks, inner reachings, or cosmic questions being asked. In their place are drawn-out filler tracks that serve as intros into songs, almost all pushing past the ten-minute mark, that give another intro into a collection of rehashed riffs from Lateralus and 10,000 Days. Gone is the wisdom of a psychic trailblazer.
Most of what always drew me to Tool was the lyrics, their delivery, and the way Maynard’s voice hung like a backdrop to the music. The words were sometimes twisted up tongue-in-cheek innuendos or dissections of psychological experiences, but on this album, they echo the same discontent of other privileged men of his era, the same rage to remain as relevant as they had always been.
I’m sure a lot, if not most, of Tool fans will enjoy the new album. They will herald the $45 Compact Disk that comes with a cool screen and, when they come rolling into town, will slap down a cool hundred dollars to see them play at the local arena. I’ve already scoured through bunches of reviews by critics and fans alike praising it with adjectives like “magnificent” and “mind-blowing”.
The conclusion I’ve come to is not that Tool has lost “it” or “sold out” or even put out a bad album. It is not them who have changed or not changed, but me. I am not the same person who is so easily duped by artists proclaiming the end of times and to heighten your awareness, you need to smoke DMT with Rogen. It is the Gen-X counterculture of fatalism and self-abuse that I’ve grown away from.
Maynard no longer comes off as prophetic. Instead, he is straining to criticize a world that he was never really a part of. The music, as talented and technique-driven as it is, now feels boring and overdone. The world has changed so much since 10,000 Days, but nothing in this new album relates to anything relevant to now. It is still the same brooding complaints from a privileged man about a world he has sought to keep himself hidden from.
