page: 
 title: Channeling The Spirits, Calling Down The Demons
author: Gary C. W. Chun

Hey, if you still have your 1995 Big Mele ticket stub, maybe 
you'll be able to get in free to tomorrow night's Tool concert ...


Or maybe not. 


This is how rumors and legends start: 1993 was the band's 
breakout year. The mysterious post-punk/metal L.A. band 
with the lowest of public profiles released a huge-selling 
debut album in "Undertow," and had just finished that 
summer's Lollapalooza tour. 


After performing at the inaugural Big Mele in August 1993, 
Tool was set to make its triumphant return to the islands.


On the day of the '95 Mele, Tool canceled its headlining 
appearance at the last moment due to a personal emergency 
that had vocalist Maynard James Keenan returning to L.A., 
hence the apology in the form of a promise to honor the 
ticket stub. (With the exception of bassist Justin Chancellor, 
the band's original lineup is still intact after eight years, with 
Keenan, guitarist Adam Jones and drummer Danny Carey.)


Free show or not, fans know the operative word for Tool's 
music is "dark"; lyrics and instrumentation of a somber, 
occult, neo-tribal nature, with a churning, roiling sound 
relentless in its, um, "heavyosity." It's a sound the band has 
been able to successfully mine since '93, despite infrequent 
touring and a near-faceless presence on the contemporary 
music scene.


It would be three years before "Aenima" would be released 
as Tool's second album, and an unheard-of five years until 
this year's "Lateralus" debuted. Between those releases, Tool 
was embroiled in a legal battle with its record label. But 
Keenan was busy during that time, working in the well-
received side band, A Perfect Circle.


To placate avid Tool fans, "Salival," a two-disc CD/DVD set 
featuring Jones' disturbing animated music videos for the 
band, as well as live and previously unreleased material, 
came out last year.
The band's taut, muscular sound and controlled chaos is at 
its peak on "Lateralus," though the disc introduces songs that 
have a bit of light and celebration in them, 
i.e. "Parabol/Parabola" and the title track. Dynamic, 
extended tracks like "Disposition" and "Reflection" show how 
well the band sound-sculpts its music, to the point where, on 
the odd-metered "Triad," Tool sounds like this generation's 
version of progressive rock pioneers King Crimson.


Which may not be too far-fetched a comparison. The band 
worked with Crimson's engineer Bill Bottrill on "Lateralus," 
and had even toured with Robert Fripp's group on the 
mainland.


Check out this description that Carey gave to Pulse magazine 
in April about the song "Lateralus": "(It) was originally 
called '987.' It was a bass riff that Justin had: It is a bar of 
nine, a bar of eight and a bar of seven. We started talking 
about this, and Maynard said it had kind of a spiral-type feel, 
and we realized that 987 is the 12th step of the Fibonacci 
sequence, which is a mathematical sequence that spirals, like 
conch shells and sunflowers, are all made off that formula."


That will mean little to tomorrow night's moshers, but it's nice 
to know that Tool rocks with both force and intellect.

 


  page: 
 title: Tool's Dark and Stormy Night
author: Gary C.W. Chun

Tool rocked Saturday's sold-out house at the UH's Andrews 
Amphitheatre, and did it without one whit of star posturing or 
exhorting the audience to join them in the usual rock 'n' roll 
calisthenics. But there was plenty of what a friend of mine 
quipped "sturm und sturm," storm and more storm.


Through eight years of playing live, right through this, the 
last show of the band's current tour, Adam Jones, Maynard 
James Keenan and Danny Carey, along with newest member 
Justin Chancellor, have remained uncompromised. Tool 
panders to no one, and the band is popular enough that the 
audience at least tolerates their unorthodox presentation.


Coming into the venue, there was a sign taped to the side of 
the tickets tent with a plea from the band asking 
concertgoers to refrain from moshing and crowd surfing to 
prevent injury. As expected, that didn't happen, but for the 
most part, it looked to be a relatively peaceful concert, what 
with no beer garden on the grounds, no alcoholic beverages 
being allowed into the concert and the occasional rain.


The band came through with a tight set, one in sync with the 
projected video that illustrated their songs with either 
abstract, computer-generated imagery or snippets of the 
Adam Jones music videos shot for MTV. 


(Before going on, to correct my Friday preview story, the band 
did make up its canceled 1995 Big Mele by playing a 
reportedly great show later that year at After Dark.)


Apparently, the lack of direct stage lighting on the members 
of Tool held true back then as it did now. The band was 
basically illuminated with back lights, Carey and his drum kit 
being the most visible. Besides watching his amazing 
drumming, the only things you could see on stage besides 
the video was a dimly lit Jones and Chancellor on either side 
of the stage, Keenan's near silhouette (although you could 
see that his head was shaven and he was clothed only in 
tight, black shorts), his lithe form writhing to the music's 
primal ferocity.


It was appropriate that Keenan thanked the group's video 
director for his visual contribution to the tour's concerts, 
because it was apparent that Tool wasn't going to detract 
from its powerful music by becoming more visible than 
necessary. While Keenan did all of the occasional and cordial 
stage patter Saturday, the staging made it clear that he's not 
Tool's frontman, but an equal member of this unit.
So it was that the music and videos, beginning with the 
second song, "Stinkfest," carried this concert. In order to stay 
in sync with the live performance, the video director would 
visually "scratch" the unsettling imagery, going back-and-
forth until the video could progress in time with the song. 
Keenan wittily took a lyrical quote from the Elvis Presley 
hit "Suspicious Minds" during the instrumental break.


"Schism," the single off Tool's latest album "Lateralus," was a 
well-received fever dream as stark, black-and-white, male-
and-female anatomies were peeled away to reveal the dark 
mysteries of their psyches.


As bass frequencies rumbled through concertgoers' bodies, 
Tool kicked into the sturm of one of its '93 debut hit "Sober," 
with unsettling imagery of a human eye being prepared for 
an operation looping on video screens.


From there, things quieted for the mystical "Disposition," as 
an underwater ballet video played, blue stage lights slowly 
sweeping over the audience. As on the album, Tool segued 
to "Reflection," a sinewy, recurring nightmarish scenario with 
a mind-awakening James solo and an especially keening 
vocal by Keenan. The band let the song slow to an end, with 
a hypnotic repeating guitar figure by Jones, and then 
emptiness.


And it really was relatively quiet. While the band recollected 
offstage, a video played with an abstract rotating figure, arms 
akimbo, over a black background, while the audience waited 
for the band's return. They came back, one by one, slowly 
joining in with the prog-rock instrumental "Triad," with more 
action in the mosh pit.


"We are Jukebox, thank you very much for coming," quipped 
Keenan as the rain started to come down harder. That magic 
moment when the band and audience click happened 
during "Aenima." There seemed to be more pogoing to this 
apocalyptic tune than before, bodies moving to the insistent 
groove all the way to the back of the amphitheater.


After that song exhausted everyone, Keenan quipped, "God 
is peeing on us," before thanking the audience "for sharing 
this warm, moist moment." He went on to say that he hoped 
that the concert would be a catalyst for positive inspirations.


The evening ended with the hard crunch of "Lateralus," the 
optimistic lyrics of looking to live with infinite possibilities, 
pushing the envelope and "reaching to embrace whatever 
may come" buoyed by the elemental, bone-crushing intensity 
of the music.


An encore would have been superfluous. Tool had given its 
all.



Posted to t.d.n: 01/21/02 15:46:48