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 title: At Spectrum, Tool bares nerve endings
author: A.D. Amorosi

The psychedelic experience is often dismissed due to the 
dippy eclat of '60s social leaders such as Timothy Leary.

But for Tool, as witnessed Tuesday at the nearly full First 
Union Spectrum, psychedelia is no joke. The quartet 
employed hallucinatory images, trance-y tunes, and anti-
authoritarian words to devastating effect.

As with the packaging of its 2001 disc, Lateralus, Tool 
exposed layers of the body - musculature, blood vessels, 
nerve endings - visually and lyrically.

While video screens displayed Edvard Munch/David Lynch-
style scenes (eyeless creatures, wide-open mouths), singer 
Maynard James Keenan and guitarist Adam Jones went to 
work making sophisticated noise to match. The twisty metal 
music was diabolically cheerless and spartan.

Crouched like a walking fist, Keenan - in near-darkness, 
hunched on his own riser near thundering percussionist Danny 
Carey - sang embittered lyrics in a primal howl.

While the singer roared into the abyss, Jones and company 
delivered progressive hardcore numbers such as "The 
Grudge" and "Stinkfist," creating rivetingly complex works as 
raging slabs of distorted guitars ricocheted off Justin 
Chancellor's wall of bass.

"Schism" was pure relaxed menace, building slowly from a 
quiet glockenspiel intro to a barbed-guitar finale. 
But "Parabol/Parabola," with a lonely-sounding Jones solo, 
was the night's most epic moment - a tense, prayerful song 
whose halting moments were uncomfortably intimate and 
thrillingly adventurous.
Posted to t.d.n: 11/01/02 11:31:27