It speaks volumes to Tool’s legacy that they can sell out a cavernous arena like the Bell Centre without ever really having any kind of mainstream “hit”; ugh, I feel so dirty using that word. Heck, even my office mate, with his archaic iPod shuffle playlist of Nickelback and Buckcherry, has a couple of Tool songs pop up every now and then. It’s as if Tool became one of the biggest rock bands in the world without anyone even noticing.
Their arrival on stage tonight is anything but quiet, though. An enormous screen reaches from the stage all the way to the rafters of the Bell Centre, and as the band start to play set opener Fear Inoculum, unreal 4K graphics start to broadcast, with a skull gradually developing flesh, vascularization, almost decomposition in reverse. Mohawked frontman Maynard James Keenan appears on raised platforms behind the rest of the band, bouncing and prowling menacingly any moment he isn’t singing. It seems paradoxical for a frontman to spend almost the entire show at the back of the stage. Seems like a quintessentially Tool thing to do them!
At the song’s conclusion, Maynard implores the crowd: “please put your phones in your pocket while we go on this journey together!” Most oblige (myself included), and at first, it seems like we won’t see Jack White levels of enforcement, but a couple of songs later, Security does start to pass through the aisles, shining the flashlight of shame into the faces of any perpetrators trying to film or take pictures, and the room goes fully dark. It’s a throwback to the gigs of my youth!
Alas, when you’re there on Media duty, it makes it a little difficult to take notes on your phone. Combined with the fact that many of the songs devolve into extended breakdown sections and sometimes tease fragments of other songs within them (for example, the intro of Lost Keys is teased into Rosetta Stoned, as is the intro of You Lied into Pneuma), I very quickly lose track of where I am in proceedings, how many songs have actually been played… definitely engrossed in the journey at this point! Maynard sings one song through a megaphone, and there’s an insane laser show that accompanies some incredible Alien UFO footage on the mega screen, and there’s a moment where the strobes blare so bright that the room illuminates as if the house lights were up. Don’t ask me at what point that happened though; like I said, I got lost a while ago.
At around 10pm, the band leaves the stage, and an enormous timer for 12 minutes begins to tick down. As the timer expires, drummer Danny Carey appears on stage to bust out a solo on an enormous brass gong, then to his drums for a drum solo, then to an effects board for a bit of an experiment (or maybe it’s an actual song? Who knows…), then back to the drums for another solo. He eventually joins the rest of the band, who are already seated at the front of the stage for Culling Voices, and confetti rains down. It’s the only stripped-back acoustic moment of the set, so it’s easy to remember that one!
Invincible follows, and at its conclusion, Maynard addresses us again, the only other time during the whole set. “Welcome back, if you remember who you are! OK, for the last song, you can take your f**kin’ phone out!” Hundreds of phones emerge from their hibernation to gleefully capture epic set closer Forty Six & 2, before the epic show concludes after almost 2½ hours. It’s an epic show, one I’m still trying to process as I write it up later that week.
Perhaps I’m still lost somewhere on that journey?!
Set List
- Fear Inoculum
- Jambi
- Rosetta Stoned
- Pneuma
- Intolerance
- Descending
- The Grudge
- Chocolate Chip Trip
- Culling Voices
- Invincible
- Forty Six & 2
Review – Simon Williams
Photos – Steve Gerrard
