Skip to main content

Tool - Fear Inoculum

https://www.hidefninja.com/community/attachments/90e4eb19eb8a23dfd663164d646fa3a2-jpg.442710/

        Here it is! The long awaited Tool album, finally released after 13 years of waiting. The question on everyone's mind: was it worth the wait? The answer: meh... not really... But is it at least good? Yah, I think so.
        I'm getting ahead of myself. There are probably some people reading this who don't even know about the band Tool. Tool is a legendary progressive metal band well known within the metal community for their unique progressive/psychedelic sound, math based rhythms, and pretentious fans. Their best songs have lots of amazing singing from the frontman, Maynard Keenan, are intensely psychedelic, and have weird music videos to go with them. Tool is honestly a really hard band to describe. If you aren't familiar with Tool already, I suggest you just stop reading this review right now, sit down somewhere comfortable, and listen to Ænima and Lateralus, their two best albums in my opinion.
        I have a confession to make, I am a big Tool fan. I love everything they have made, and have listened to all of it multiple times, including their live album and demo tape, so I will probably be a bit biased in this review, so take that as you will. On the day this album came out, I went strait to the record store and bought the limited collectors edition of the album, which includes an extra long booklet, a little screen that plays a video, and some really cool artwork (I will post photos of it below).
        Personally, I liked this album, however, it has some problems that may prevent non Tool fans from enjoying it. Mostly that it is kind of slow and boring. The album is a massive 87 minutes long, with most tracks around 13 minutes long, and mostly full of slow psychedelic melodies. Even I had a bit of trouble getting into it at first. It wasn't until my 5th or 6th listen that I really started enjoying it. The album also has a few weird transition tracks such as "Litanie Contre La Peur" and "Legion Inoculant" that are kind of interesting, but just seem unnecessary. In addition, this album has no super catchy or memorable tracks such as "The Pot", "Parabol/Parabola", "Hooker With a Penis", or "Sober" from their previous releases. Instead, the album is almost entirely psychedelic sludge and soundscapes. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but might be a turn off for casual listeners.
        This is not to say that Fear Inoculum doesn't have its good moments. The title track comes like a refreshing drink of Tooly psychedelic goodness, almost like something off of Lateralus. It's a track that just screams Tool in a good way, from the whiny guitars, to the funky theorems, to Maynard' awesome vocals. Earlier, I mentioned the weird transition tracks on this album, but one of these tracks that stands out is "Chocolate Chip Trip". On this track we get to hear the Danny Carey's true skill on the drums, delivering to us an amazing proggy drum solo. The fan favorite song on this album is 7empest. It is full of groovy guitar riffs and angry lyrics somewhat reminiscent of Tool's early days. The rest of the songs on this album aren't bad, and if you ignore the fact that this album took 13 years to come out, it's pretty decent.

Rating: 6.5/10


Here's a picture of the deluxe collectors edition , which I got:
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular

Молчат Дома - Этажи

You may be wondering, 'Is the band Молчат Дома, who created the album, Этажи, a foreign band?' and 'Are they going to be singing some non-english language, perhaps Russian?' The answer to both of these questions is yes. I can't remember how I found this album originally, but one day it came up in my YouTube recommended, I instantly recognized the cover, and decided to give it a listen. It was really good. It reminded of me listening to Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures for the first time. Note: In this review, I italicize Russian words written in the Roman alphabet, put "quotation marks" around English translations, and do nothing to Russian words written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Молчат Дома or Molchat Doma (roughly translates to "The Houses are Silent") is a 'cold wave' band. This is a genre of music that I don't know too much about, but from what I understand the genre is close to goth, except more detached and minimalistic. Si...
Post a Comment
Read more

Death Grips - The Money Store

        In my recent review of Cattle Decapitation - The Anthropocene Extinction, I mentioned how I was surprised how much I liked that band, despite previously not being a fan of the genre. Well here I am again, and this time I'm even more surprised. A while ago, looking to expand my musical horizons, I talked to some of my friends about wanting to try to find some hip-hop that I liked, and knowing my music taste, one of them recommended that I checked out Death Grips. When I first listened to their most popular album, The Money Store, I was skeptical, but their unique blend of hip-hop, industrial, and noise spoke to me. Over the next few weeks I started listening to their other releases. Now, call me Anthony Fantano because I'm a fan of Death Grips. Now, enough about me, lets talk about the band.         Death Grips is an experimental industrial hip hop band from California, consisting of Zach Hill, Andy ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bad Religion - No Control

        Ahhh... there's nothing more refreshing than listening to some good punk after a hard week! Here is No Control by Bad Religion. Bad Religion is an extremely influential punk band, and one of the best-selling punk bands of all time. As their name suggests, Bad Religion is very anti-religion, which is reflected in a lot of their songs. Bad Religion also covers many other topics common to punk music including racism, politics, drugs, equal-rights, and society in general. Something I always found really cool about Bad Religion is that the front runner of the band, Greg Graffin, is a professor of life science and paleontology at the University of California, and a professor of evolution at Cornell University. There are some that might say that "Bad Religion is too mainstream," or "not anarchist enough," or even "aren't real punk because they know how to sing and play their instruments." Obviously all of these people are wrong, but Bad Religion i...
Post a Comment
Read more