Tool’s New Album “Fear Inoculum” Tops the Charts
After 13 years of hiatus from popular rock band Tool their fifth studio album has been released, and It’s one of their best.
Photo by Gabriel Ramos
Tool’s new album dropped as hot as a torch.
October 29, 2019
Tool’s new album “Fear Inoculum” has topped the US billboard 200 albums chart, as well as five other nationally ranked album charts in its opening week. Released on Aug. 30, 2019, it is the band’s first album since “10,000 days,” which was released in 2006. This is drawing the attention of old fans and new fans who’ve never even heard of the band. Unfortunately, many issues (most regarding “10,000 days,”) set the album back in its production.
“It took them like 13 or 14 years right? That’s really a long time since they used to put out albums like a year after another. I think the time passed somehow like made it that much better of a listen,”Adam Laughton (9) said.
The record experienced a delay over the past years for multiple reasons. Three undisclosed members of the band were involved in separate accidents, resulting in a few cracked ribs. A series of court battles followed, and a lawsuit from a friend who claimed credit for the band’s artwork. On top of this, lead singer Maynard James Keenan was encumbered in his other projects such as “Puscifer” and “A Perfect Circle.” But by 2015 all the legal issues were over, except the album hadn’t even been thought up yet, there were only strands of ideas.
“There’s no actual songs…It’s still kind of noodles in a big basket. Lots of noodles, just no dishes. I think a lot of it is just that age where you want it to be right and we’ve had some success in the past and the fear of this thing coming out and not being accepted—the fear that it’s not as good as it can be—that can be detrimentally crippling,” Maynard James Keenan said in an interview with Spin.
The band had over 20 song ideas in the making, including some like “7empest,” which dates back to ideas Adam Jones, the lead guitarist, had back in the 1990s. It brings back some of the old feel of some original Tool songs, but adds some new dramatic feel, similar to the preaching of a choir. But Keenan chalks it down to the band constantly second-guessing themselves, and that this is why the album was not released sooner. Despite the struggle, the album was released and has received non-stop praise.
“I just really like it because after having to listen to the same Tool stuff forever, it’s like I’m not bored anymore. It sounds more refined; I like it even more than their last album. All the songs are really good. The vocals are like church singers, but the music is super hard rock,” Alfonso Torres (10) said.
