{"id":3415,"date":"2019-08-29T14:56:15","date_gmt":"2019-08-29T14:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/slateman.net\/blog\/?p=3415"},"modified":"2019-08-29T14:56:15","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T14:56:15","slug":"mini-review-tool-fear-inoculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slateman.net\/blog\/archives\/3415","title":{"rendered":"Mini-Review: Tool – Fear Inoculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Surmising several listens briefly: I like Fear Inoculum<\/b> more than the last two albums combined. Tool<\/b> holds a special part of my musical life – from getting into them back during Undertow<\/b> to the game-changing \u00c6nima<\/b>. I saw the band four times and bought Salival<\/b> at its midnight release back when Tower Records<\/b> still existed. But their last two efforts left me desiring more, though Lateralus<\/b> left more of an impact than its successor. The last time I saw them, I emerged bored by the second half, after a tremendously-exciting first half<\/a>. And there we ended it – more than a decade ago – and with no real hopes or expectations for this long-gestating follow-up.<\/p>\n

The first single released earlier in the month was promising and I don’t particularly like tracks 5 or 6. However, the remaining four songs are remarkable. They are familiar, yet new. The tracks sound wonderful and have a spectacular, heavy feel. But just like the prior album, something was missing. And it was easy to identify: Maynard. Part of what drove me to the band two-and-a-half decades ago was his fiery nature. He would unleash and it was amazing. But now, he’s rarely not monotone. He’s skilled – no doubt – but it gets boring. One song has this amazing buildup. Each bar comes with the promise of this culminating bomb! You feel the excitement…you wait for the inevitable…and you leave disappointed at the cliff from which you fall. <\/p>\n

While I am highly critical of Maynard, he is quite adept at his craft, minus the aforementioned lack of fire. Just two or three perfectly-placed “AHHHHhhh!”s would make this album all but perfect. But it speaks to how good the rest is that it’s a solid record even without kick-ass Maynard. The songs are reminiscent of the past, which feels so familiar. That mix of new and nostalgia make me thrilled to put it on yet again – barring those two skippable tracks. I’ll have to look into the added digital ones. For now though, even on release day, I can proclaim this a superior record to the prior two. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Surmising several listens briefly: I like Fear Inoculum more than the last two albums combined. Tool holds a special part of my musical life – from getting into them back during Undertow to the game-changing \u00c6nima. I saw the band four times and bought Salival at its midnight release back when Tower Records still existed. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15,13,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-worst","category-blog","category-music","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slateman.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slateman.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slateman.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slateman.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slateman.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/slateman.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3417,"href":"https:\/\/slateman.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions\/3417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slateman.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slateman.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slateman.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}