Concert Review: Tool – Spark Arena, February 28, 2020

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Tool performed at Auckland’s Spark Arena last night, unleashing a sprawling, visually magnificent 2-hour set on the sold-out arena crowd and transcending the confines of genre with a cerebral, mind-melting sensory experience. Here is Oxford Lamoureaux’s review.

I was fortunate to grow up with two older brothers who, between patches of brotherly disharmony, were gracious enough to provide an early introduction to music far beyond my scope as a pop-addled child and teenager. Two of the stand-out discoveries in this time were the 2000 Deftones album, White Pony, and the complex masterpiece that is Tool’s 1996 release, Ænima.

Despite burning through hundreds of batteries listening to an increasingly scratched album on a glitchy CD Walkman, it wasn’t until I attended their 2013 concert at the now-rebranded Vector Arena that I truly fell in love with Tool as both musicians and masters of a magnificent visual art performance. This latest tour, which coincides with the release of their long-awaited fifth studio album, Fear Inoculum, is every bit the visceral, sensory experience fans have long been craving for.

Opening with the slow-building title track of their first release in thirteen years, Fear Inoculum, I was momentarily distracted by stunning visual contrast as a result of Tool’s strict no-photo-or-video policy. In a pocket of time where die-hard fans view their favourite band’s concerts through a phone screen, and arenas are set ablaze by burning-white seas of smartphone flashlights, a pitch-black arena packed to the ceiling with fans is unthinkably rare.

While many may dismiss the harsh fan censorship as maniacally precious, the lack of unnecessarily distracting visual stimulus is a core part of what makes a live Tool show so emotionally and visually overwhelming. While I may not possess the ability to accurately dissect the true motives behind the band’s visual arrangements or the progressive flow in their sets, it is, above all else, an intimate and incredibly personal shared experience for many of their fans.

Moving through each corollary number with Ænema, 7empest, and Pneuma, this musical and sensory swell was reflected in the visual display which dominated the back wall of the stage, and the increasingly complex intersecting beams of light washing over the crowd. The impeccable drumming of Danny Carey continually reflected this inner reflex response from the crowd, where seamless blurs of time signatures felt perfectly natural, as though in your heart you already knew the minor shifts and rhythmic flow of the set in its entirety.

This approach to a unification of progressive metal, visual-art experimentation, and full engagement by the audience was also arguably the most cohesive part of the show as an experience. The release of Fear Inoculum divided fans, with many praising the release as the band’s most impressive and ground-breaking yet, and just as many dismissing the album as self-indulgent and disappointingly flat.

In a live setting, however, it’s impossible not to succumb to the overwhelming stimulus of Tool’s audio-visual journey, with floating commentary around me both criticising the choice of songs and gushing at the majestic beauty of the performance in its entirety. Schism, Jambi, and Merkaba followed, highlighting the consistent evolution and development in their sound as a band; the fluid movement throughout and between songs felt both entirely natural and conversational, building an intensity within the crowd which saw some of the audience brought to tears.

While this extreme reaction to a live Tool performance isn’t exactly commonplace, it illustrates the scope of the band’s appeal, with the crowd reacting in their own, highly personal way as the set moved into Vicarious and Descending. Some slowly swayed and rhythmically rocked to the bass of Justin Chancellor, while others thrashed their hair to the psychedelic guitar of Adam Jones. Notably, the persistent band arrangement of Tool sees vocalist, Maynard James Keenan, positioned toward the rear of the stage, where his echoed, distorted, and soul-grinding vocals seem to pour from a shadowy abyss.

All of this combines to create a concert quite unlike any other; a set which isn’t necessarily designed to be just listened to, but felt, and one that asks you to succumb and fall into its perpetually rhythmic blend of progressive, tender melodies and brutal metal moments. A prolonged and isolated drum segment saw Carey move from a giant gong to the custom electronic drum pads surrounding the rear of his kit, weaving polyrhythmic intensity into Chocolate Chip Trip and Invincible.

Closing out with (-) Ions, and a finale of Stinkfist which saw much of the seated crowd jump to their feet, there was no crowd-chanting encore or restless dissatisfaction from the crowd; instead, the set and the visual journey naturally concluded, distilling a sense of resolution and closure into the overall performance.

However you feel about Tool, their evolution as musicians or their latest album release, the live experience is wholly personal, a shared sensory spectacle that still feels entirely your own, at once both a visual vortex of progressive-metal menace, and an intimate, soul-aching connection with a band who encourage you to focus on the heart of the event: the music, and all the spiritual magic it can awaken within us.

~Oxford Lamoureaux

Tool Setlist
 
Fear Inoculum
Ænema
7empest
Pneuma
Schism
Jambi
Merkaba
Vicarious
Descending

Encore:

Chocolate Chip Trip
Invincible
(-) Ions
Stinkfist
Dancing Queen (ABBA – from tape)

Oxford Lamoureaux
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