Publication: Toronto Star
Date: September, 2001
Transcribed by
Barbara Goss (caramelle81@hotmail.com)
Barbara Goss (caramelle81@hotmail.com)
page: F3 title: Too much prog, not enough rock author: Ben Rayner Tool's brief tour with King Crimson this summer more or less made it official: Prog-rock hath returned, and woe to all who stand in its path. While prog-lovin' contemporaries such as Radiohead and the late Smashing Pumpkins have taken pains to distance themselves from the Yes and Pink Floyd records tucked into their record shelves, Tool has always unashamedly worn its influences on its collective sleeve. Or at least, on the gruesome bio-mechanical designs that adorn its album jackets and harrowing animated video clips. At the same time, though, the Los Angeles-born quartet has absorbed enough metal over the years to understand that tricky time signatures, enigmatic song titles, a costumed frontman (actually, he'd painted a blue stripe over his face this night) and noodling all the way up your own behind in concert only cuts it for so long. Every once in a while, you've got to unload. And when Tool, which already proved a refreshing whiff of brimstone at the end of an otherwise dismal main-stage program during this year's cold and dreary Edgefest in Molson Park, unloads, you pay attention. Worryingly, last night's oft-mesmerizing but unwisely paced performance before around 15,000 faithful at the Air Canada Centre displayed signs that Tool's inner Genesis is beginning to crowd out the side of the band that would rather listen to Slayer. Concentrating mainly on the expansive, intricate "journey to the centre of your mind" musical set pieces from the band's sprawling new Lateralus album, the show wound up suffering from a bit too much "prog" and not enough "rock." Not that there wasn't rock. Lateralus' mammoth "The Grudge" and the searing "Stinkfist," from 1996's Aenima, had testicles quaking - the female presence was nominal, to say the least - throughout the ACC early on in the 90-minute-plus set. Things relented to a menacing simmer for much of the mid-section, however, as the band traded overt, riff-powered release for slowly crescendoing exercises in mood and snake-charming rhythms, uncorking its full might and shadowy frontman Maynard James Keenan's spine-tingling upper-register growl only in furious bursts. The average Tool fan is a charitable sort, willing to let the band indulge itself at great lengths while the promise of the cataclysm to come hangs, Tantric, in the air. But there were hints that even the closeted Emerson, Lake and Palmer fans in the house weren't finding enough distraction in the typically top-notch video reels - giant eyeballs, sinewy nude forms running and spiralling like mercury, a gruesome loop from a haunted toilet in Hell - and Keenan's Jack Skellington prancing as the extended interludes carried past the halfway mark. When a pair of contortionists decked out like the biological curiosities in the new "Schism" video scaled the backdrop to dangle eerily before flickering images of a crucifix, one desperate soul was heard to bellow across the bowl: "Just come back out and play some f---ing [sic] music!" When Tool finally let loose with Aenima's lacerating title track - a tribally pounding metal call to "flush" Los Angeles away whose throwaway "is this the end" line gained disturbing resonance in light of recent events - the ACC's energy level took a mercurial leap. Much more of that and people would have been ripping the seats out. But alas, there was only one more explosion, "Lateralus." Tool's still a force to be reckoned with. But again, less prog, more rock.
Posted to t.d.n: 09/19/01 20:27:25