Tool
Brisbane Entertainment Centre
Monday 24 January 2011
First, a confession: I am guilty of taking Tool too seriously. Throughout my adolescence, they were my one and only; my idea of modern music’s apex. I took the ride, I swallowed the pill. I bought the shirts. I’ve listened to Tool’s music more than that of any other band. Theirs was the first proper live show I saw, in 2002, aged 14. It blew my tiny mind.
So it’s with a continuous sense of melancholy that I look upon tonight’s proceedings, and with fresh eyes and broader musical experiences, realise that there’s not a whole lot about Tool that’s remarkable. Having bought into their idea of reality – the anti-image, the mystique, the overwrought psychoanalytical component of it all – so heavily in my formative years, to step back into their world is to question past allegiances. Theirs is a musical rabbit hole deeper than most bands are able to conceive, let alone dig; sift through the smoke and smug, though, and you’re left with a handful of unwieldy hard rock songs that mean a lot to a lot of people.
The band play ten songs in nearly two hours, beginning with the last track from 1996’s
Aenima and ending with the same album’s first track. Timothy Leary’s
“Think for yourself, question authority” spiel resonates around the room at the beginning of ‘Third Eye’, a 15 minute-long trek through some of Tool’s weightiest subject matter, and heaviest musicianship. It’s intended to be an eye-opening beginning, no doubt, and it succeeds: yellow lights flash into the audience during the song’s chorus-of-sorts (
“In / Out”, sings Maynard Keenan, over and over), while the screens behind the band swirl with violent colour and movement. It is the longest, and probably most difficult song in their repertoire, comprising many different suites which require complete attention from each player. They nail it, though, and thus set the bar high for the set’s remainder. To their credit, nothing they play tonight is met with anything less than their best, and when they’re in lockstep – as in the thunderous midsection of ‘Jambi’ – they’re pretty much untouchable. Adam Jones’ talkbox guitar solo in this song is one of their most inspired musical decisions. It takes me back to the first time I heard it, having bought the album –
10,000 Days – at a midnight launch in 2006. (Remember when people used to line up to buy music? Jesus.)
That album’s opening tune, ‘Vicarious’, follows, and it’s a bummer that Keenan opts not to sing the climactic moment (
“Vicariously, I / Live while the whole world dies”). There’s a dude in the row in front of me who’s been losing his mind for the first half-hour – contorting wildly, air-guitaring, fist-pumping, generally being a nuisance; he decides to take a cigarette break during ‘Intension’, a low-key track which dissolves into sequenced electronica. He returns in time to hear ‘Right In Two’, the final
10,000 Days track of the night.
There’s a momentary lull, which bassist Justin Chancellor eventually fills with a rarely-heard bassline. It belongs to ‘You Lied’, a song that Chancellor originally wrote and released with his old band, Peach. Tool reworked the song into a slow-moving prog epic around the release of
Aenima, when he first joined the band, which they then released as a live cut on the
Salival CD/DVD box set (see, told you I was a Tool nerd). To hear them chug through this beast is a joy; so too, when Chancellor joins Keenan on vocals for the chorus. (It’s the only time he goes near the mic tonight.) This is the set’s best moment thus far, and I’m feeling pretty good about it all.
‘Schism’ follows, a track from 2001’s
Lateralus that I’ve never been particularly fond of. Jones’ video for the song plays on the two side-of-stage screens. Its contents have always amused me; the bit where the little clay guy is reaching through the human character’s cheek skin? Classic. And the bit where the little grinning figures use their huge teeth to latch onto the humans’ faces? Hysterical! The only part of this song that I enjoy is when the deviate from the original version and speed up the mid-section, before they all quit firing hard and return to the original midsection. Snore. Five-plus minutes of white noise follows – I shit you not – during which they leave the stage. No-one really knows what to do at this point. As time stands still and everyone stands around looking at the swirling colours on screen, I think about how they could’ve spent that five minutes; by, I don’t know, playing another song? ‘Jimmy’ or ‘H.’ would’ve worked well, or pretty much any track from their debut album
Undertow (which doesn’t get a look-in tonight, though apparently they played ‘Flood’ at the Big Day Out yesterday).
The white noise acts as their encore break, I guess, which is funny because to my knowledge, Tool has steadfastly refused to play encores for many years now. For them to throw in the towel 90 minutes in, leave the stage for a bit, then return? I’m counting that as an encore, guys, even though no-one was clapping. As they start ‘Lateralus’ – Jones annoyingly fucking around with the notes in the intro – I wonder what they could’ve been doing backstage. Slamming some of Keenan’s delicious wine, perhaps? (Did you know that he now owns a vineyard in Arizona? Google it.) I once held this song up as the summit of human musical expression; yes, even above ‘Achilles’ Last Stand’. Now, I feel nothing. The melancholy returns. Until, that is, toward the end when Chancellor begins plucking Cliff Burton’s incredible bassline to ‘Orion’, and I damn near lose my shit. See, last week, Tool did the same thing – except that
Kirk Hammett joined them on stage for a couple of minutes, soloing along to one of Metallica’s finest instrumentals. That doesn’t happen tonight, and the ‘Orion’ deviation only lasts maybe 16 bars, but it’s still a brilliant moment, and well-received by attentive metalheads across the venue.
Keenan is leaning on the speaker stack between him and drummer Danny Carey at this point, looking bored. But probably taking the piss at the same time. Maybe. He doesn’t show it often, but the singer has a deep comedic vein that runs through all his work. I get the feeling that by this point, this is all a bit of a joke to him: this music thing pays the bills that allow his vineyard and wine production facility to grow, and eventually turn a profit (maybe). As the song segues back into its regular form and climaxes (
“Ride the spiral to the end / It may just go where no-one’s been”), he starts the hissed vocal intro of ‘Aenema’. “See you soon”, he offers, before Jones sustains his distinctive guitar feedback and leads the band into ‘Stinkfist’. I can see every single head in the general admission area nodding in unison.
Just before they reach the song’s emotional height (
“I’ll keep digging / ‘Til I feel something”), they take a left-turn into the extended instrumental version. It makes for one final surprise before Tool clock off for the night, no doubt having blown thousands of tiny minds in the process. I know the feeling.
Andrew McMillen
Setlist:
Third Eye
Jambi
Vicarious
Intension
Right In Two
You Lied (Peach cover)
Schism
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Lateralus (with Metallica ‘Orion’ cover)
Aenema
Stinkfist