Spring 1997 Tour Reviews

Date: February 21


From: blauterb (???@stud.uni-frankfurt.de) Frist of all let me say that this tool-page is great and every other day I go there and get the NEWS and all the other stuff. So thank you very much for obtaining this page. And I understand that the fans have to contribute reviews etc. so you can have a complete page. As I looked through the concert-reviews I saw that there was nothing about the cologne concert so I thought I should write up a short rewiew. Could very well be that most of you won't like it because overall I didn't care for the concert at all. I am not an OGT back from '92-from the first EP. I bought my first TOOL-CD in November and of course it was called AENIMA. From that day on I somehow became addicted to their music and after three weeks I owned all their CD's. I started reading their Lyrics and I became interested in the messages they had to tell. In between a few month Tool became more than a band to me. There was a way of life behind it. Then came the day when I read on this very page that they were coming to Germany for some shows. I checked out the dates and saw that they weren't coming to Frankfurt. No Problem, to travel a few miles to a Tool-concert is a honour and nothing less. I got the tickets and on Friday the 21st we drove down to Cologne. In front of the so-called 'music-hall' were 50 to 100 people still wanting for tickets and high prices were offered for mine (up to three times the price I payed). Seeing all this fuss about this great band I agreed with all the people knowing what they would miss not seeing this concert. Once the opening act was over Tool finally entered the stage and everyone was just outrageous. They started out with Stinkfist (the chickenweasel-fun IS over...no reaction at all) and as told in other reviews Maynard was allover painted. I was really amazed by the intense reaction of the crowd and by the light show and the videoscreens. All together it gave a mystic touch to Tools performance and as I said they started out really good. When the first two songs are over the fans expected some kind of conversation with the band as usual. It would have been enough if just one of the guys said 'HI' or something like that just so the audience gets the feeling that the band even notices them. But nothing like that. Instead Maynard turned around after every song not looking at the audience while the other band-members kept staring to the floor. The concequence of this behaviour was that after four or so songs the audience hardly applauded because nobody really knew what was going on. The band seemed really annoyed by their duty to play that night and they had a VERY arrogant attitude towards the fans. No word was spoken at all. So I thought I should just stick to the music and enjoy it since that is why the band is here but the music didn't do it's duty as well. Tool played mostly slow songs like Jimmy or Pushit and in addition to that they played 'em slower than they are on the record. When everybody kind of wondered if they were seeing THE Tool performance everybody was so enthusiastic about they started a 10 min long jam session right in front of Sober. Let me put it this way: Everybody that owns a Tool-CD knows that these guys know their instruments and none of us needs further proof of that. And what they did there on stage was simply loud and boring. Maybe it means a lot to them but in a situation where the crowd seemed kind of disappointed it was totally inapropriate to play something like that. That's at least my opinion. They could have used that time better playing songs like 'cold and ugly' or 'undertow' or 'H.'. After they finished 'sober' they played a pretty good 'opiate' and everybody who would have thought that the concert would go a normal way now was very wrong. Done with 'opiate' everyone took of their instruments and gathered in front of Danny's set. There they started talking and at least five minutes passed before anything else happened. Then, as a great moment of this stunning Tool-show Maynard came down to earth and talked to us...one sentence:" What do you want?" Of course everybody started yelling so Maynard handed the mic over to Adam. Instead of saying something he imitated a fort with his mouth and gave the mic back to Maynard. That's when I finally thought 'That's enough'. Don't get me wrong I still think of Tool as one of the greatest bands ever but no band out there wether they rock or not is capable of such an arrogant attitude towards their fans. WE buy their records and WE pay to see their concerts and WE travel 200 miles or more to see them and all they do is play their songs with a certain 'Fuck the audience'-mentality. That is not enough to me. Not even when the band's name is Tool. Their not the messiah and their just human beings themselfes but they act like out of this world. Their CD's and messages are worth living after but their attitude is something I don't think a Tool-fan should appreciate. To conclude I can only say that this concert was probably their only bad one since all the other reviews are quite good. So lets hope that they just had a bad day. See you guys...ben. P.S. kabir...I would really appreciate if you would NOT print out my e-mail adress since it is used for some buiseness too...

From: DIER2201@uni-trier.de Subject: tool-gig in cologne, germany Yes, they were great! I mean, what did you expect. I for once already knew that I was up for the concert of a life-time since my girlfriend had seen them the night before in Hamburg. So I wasn't too surprised to see Maynard come onstage semi-naked and painted blue. What did surprise me was that the band played all the songs a tad bit slower than the album versions and all the people that are in bands will know how hard that little demonstration of musical skill is to pull off. Anyway, due to the slow tempo there wasn't too much slamming and moshing but rather a wave-like motion of the whole crowd, so everybody got to see quite a lot of the stage action. Well, except for the completely mental fucker right behind me who hit me in the shoulder really hard with his forehead without even noticing it about seven or eight times. After the "rumble-intro" with the cover artwork on the video screens the set started off with "Stinkfist". Maynard used two mics for the different voices of the song - a big hooray for the sound-manager - and moved in his idiosyncratic reptile-machine way. After the song there was very little "chickenweaseling" and no comments from the band. The audience seemed rather stunned by the intense performance as the applause died away rather quickly. Tool concerts don't seem to be the place to shout: "ROCK ON DUDES!" really. The next song, I guess, was "Undertow" altough I am not too sure about the set-list. I still know they played "Prison sex" with the extra bit in the middle, which I think greatly improves the overall build-up of the song. They played "Sober" with the jam-session. Maynard used the brief pause in "Hooker with a Penis" to point out that the audience should "check out our t-shirts", what a laugh. I'm still not sure about the beginning of "Eulogy": on CD the beeping sound seemed to be coming from a flute or melodica. On stage stage Maynard used this small megaphone to the same effect. I guess he sang into the thing switching it on and off to produce the "bee-beep" sounds, how's that for originality? After the regular set the band went backstage, then came back to play another song which I can't remember and then stayed onstage to be applauded. After a while Maynard barked: "Whaddayawant?" and handed over the mic to Adam who only said: "PFFFRRRRZT!". I thought it was funny, most people around me looked rather puzzled. Oh right, the they started off into "Aenema" to finish the set. To sum things up, it rrrrreally was a great concert, one you go to to see the band and not dance your ass off, the video-installations were magnificent, the sound was great and the band were awe-inspiring, so whaddayawant? Cheers, William