Review: The transformative power of a Tool concert
The band’s show in Rochester’s Blue Cross Arena balanced pure power against subtlety and nuance
Tool has shattered so many cliches surrounding heavy music by this point that it’s hard to keep track of them all.
But on Tuesday, when the band stopped by Rochester’s Blue Cross Arena for a sold-out show, all of that envelope-pushing and convention-snubbing was in full-frontal effect over the course of a two-plus hour set that touched hearts, tickled imaginations, vibrated eardrums and melted faces.
Conventional wisdom might have it that “metal” audiences aren’t necessarily paying the strictest attention to the music itself during a concert - that, in fact, it’s all about the energy, the aggression, the volume and the spectacle, and far less about the nuance.
In Rochester, however, Tool’s gig felt like an energized recital., much moreso than a “metal concert.”
There was no moshing (though I did dance the whole time, which is no mean feat when you consider that time signatures like 10/8 and 7/8, replete with exuberant syncopations and polyrhythms, are not exactly hallmarks of dance music.)
The crowd - standing from the moment the house lights went down and a recording of the “Third Eye” intro came blasting through the PA, heralding the band’s arrival on stage - appeared rapt throughout the show, fully engrossed in the band’s dramatic, often elegiac sound, and committed to taking the journey with them.
Tool fans listen. The evidence of such is abundant.
Opener “Fear Inoculum” laid down the template for the evening’s proceedings, its slowly evolving groove providing the canvas for singer Maynard James Keenan’s sinewy, serpentine, nuanced melody and imagistic lyric detailing the expulsion of negativity and “the venom and the fear that binds me.”
As the song built in intensity, Tool’s primary strength - the creation of a multi-limbed, single, organic musical entity dedicated to ensemble performance rather than mere individual virtuosity (though individual virtuosity is ever-apparent) - was laid blaringly bare for all in attendance to bask in.
This is a band that summons deep and impactful power, and wields that power responsibly.
That sense of accepting responsibility and approaching life with personal discipline is at the core Keenan’s lyrics, which are so refreshingly free of heavy music cliches that they are singular in the modern music landscape.
Taken as a whole, the lyrics informing the body of music Tool performed in Rochester covered everything from the battle between materialism and spirituality(“Jambi”), to the banality of hypocrisy (“The Pot”), the need to reconnect with our collective artistic/creative imaginations (“Pneuma”), the inability of those who “wear the grudge like a crown” to get out of their own way and fulfill their human potential (“The Grudge”), and the necessity of facing the aging progress with grace, dignity and a refusal to go quietly (“Invincible”).
These beautiful lyrics, given wings by Keenan’s uniquely shaped melodic lines, formed a libretto of sorts, one underscored and dramatized by the grandiloquent-but-nuanced bombast and light/shade manipulation summoned by guitarist Adam Jones, bassist Justin Chancellor and drummer Danny Carey.
The Tool sound - particularly when married to stunning, highly artistic video accompaniment and subtly dramatic lighting - is immense and often overwhelming, in the non-pejorative sense of that word. It’s a deeply sensual experience, one that engages mind and body in equal measure, and though it might fairly be described as ‘dark,’ the sum result is a feeling of being uplifted, challenged, and respected, simultaneously.
I left Rochester on Monday night feeling like a better person than the one who’d arrived there 3 hours earlier. If this was simply an illusion, as it may well have been, it’s one that I welcome. And it’s a testament to the power of Tool’s art that an evening spent in its presence can summon such feelings.
Tool
Blue Cross Arena, Rochester, NY
11/7/2023
Third Eye Intro
Fear Inoculum
Jambi
The Pot
Rosetta Stoned
Pneuma
Descending
The Grudge
Intermission
Chocolate Chip Trip
Culling Voices
Invincible
(Ions excerpt)
Encore:
Stinkfist