Artist: Tool
Album: Fear Inoculum
Year: 2019
Rating: 94/100
Let me get one thing out of the way right now: Tool are one of the few bands whose entire musical output has been faultless to my ears. This review will be impossible to write without sounding like a fanboy, and even if I were to be disparaging about this album, I'd still sound like a Tool fan. Anyway, after a 13 year wait, Tool are back with the much awaited Fear Inoculum, a sprawling beast of an album clocking in at 86 and a half minutes of music (on the Spotify release) or just shy of 80 (the CD version). That alone is a world away from the early Soundgarden and Melvins-esque stylings of Opiate or Undertow.
What do we get then? Well, album opener and title track "Fear Inoculum" starts us off, with some slow builds that bands such as Neurosis and Cult of Luna would have been proud of, and some almost Puscifer-esque vocals from Maynard James Keenan. As ever, it's sumptuously crafted, and superbly executed. "Pneuma" might just be the greatest song Tool have ever committed to record in memory, with Adam Jones, Danny Carey and Justin Chancellor all playing to their own musical strengths, and "7empest" is a sprawling monster of "Third Eye" level epic proportions, with some almost Meshuggah-esque instrumentation.
However, even with these stand out moments, the real strength of Fear Inoculum is that it plays seamlessly as an album, and that in this instance, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The 13 year wait is finally over, and one set of memes has become redundant in place of an entirely new set of memes in their place. Tool are back, and how!
Track listing
1. Fear Inoculum
2. Pneuma
3. Litanie Contre la Peur
4. Invincible
5. Legion Inoculant
6. Descending
7. Culling Voices
8. Chocolate Chip Trip
9. 7empest
10. Mockingbeat
