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Double J
07-12-2010, 06:17 PM

This will be a very long review by a first-time TOOL show-goer. It looks massive, but it'll probably only take about 5 minutes to read.

THE BUILDUP
This was my first show. I’ve been a TOOL fan for a long time, but only really got into them since between Aenima and Lateralus (which is still a long time ago), and before this I had never seen them live. I had no idea they were even on tour until I randomly heard a radio commercial advertising that tickets were going on sale in a few days. Apparently the show was not on the original schedule, and they added it just weeks before the tour started. I believe this is the first time they’ve been in Seattle since 2006. I’m still pissed that I missed the show at The Gorge, so I was burning to see them. They sold out in less than hour, and so to the scalpers I went. I only know a couple of other people who are big fans, and they either couldn’t go or wouldn’t drop the cash to get floor seats, so ended up going solo. Their loss.

I had a couple of concerns, mainly that Key Arena is not known for stellar sound, and that the band might not be very energetic since they just did a show in Vancouver the night before. I was also kind of bummed that it was all assigned seating with no general admission.

THE SHOW
I was at the very end of the 6th row, all the way to the left (MY left, on Adam’s side of the stage). I still think the pulsing mosh pit of general admission really adds to the energy of a show, but I discovered that having an assigned seat also has some major advantages. I could go to the bathroom and not have to fight my way back to a good spot through 5,000 people. I didn’t have people’s sweaty BO all over me (please, concert-goers – I know you love your “alternative” lifestyle, but you’re in public now… TAKE A SHOWER!), and I didn’t have a crowd surfer kicking me in the back of the head every 5 minutes. I am 6’3” so visibility is usually not an issue. However, being in the end seat and very close to the stage meant that I was right in the security hornet’s nest. I wasn’t going to get away with anything (but I did manage to take one blurry photo with my iPhone).

The opening band was “Rajas.” Never heard of them. They were OK. The drummer was really good. This was probably the most tightly scheduled rock concert I’ve ever been to. Rajas went on at about 8:05 and played five or six songs, getting off the stage by about 8:40. The crew started setting up for TOOL. Then at about 8:57 they started playing that super-deep thumping bass track over the speakers to let everybody in the arena know the show was about to start. Lights went down just after 9.

I knew the setlist beforehand, of course. They started with some subtle visuals and repeated the “Think for yourself; question authority” line over and over. Then Adam, Justin, and Danny came out to huge cheers, and assumed their usual spots. They started picking away at Third Eye and then a shadowed Maynard appeared on the platform left of Danny, and the effects started in earnest. Maynard started with the mohawk, but would later don the cowboy hat.

The entire back of the stage was one giant, long, bright screen that displayed crazy high-def visuals. For the whole show, Maynard was an almost-totally black silhouette in front of it, never once a spotlight on him. It was fucking awesome. He was like this perfect human shadow puppet in front of a mind-blowing graphics and light show, doing his hunched, jerking style of moving, waving his cowboy hat, dancing, screaming and kicking – just really getting into it, but in a weird subdued way like only Maynard does. He was, in essence, exactly as I imagined, and it rocked. The only thing was that, from my perspective, a lot of time Adam was directly in my line of sight to Maynard, but it wasn’t a huge deal.

Danny, however, steals the show. The man is a machine, there’s no two ways about it. There are drummers, there are good drummers, there are spectacular drummers, and then there’s Danny. Seeing it live, you really see that without him, there is no TOOL. He pounds and crashes like a god throwing down thunder and lightning with laser precision. I can’t describe it, you just have to see it. Adam is kind of a stump. I was closest to him, so I got the best look at him. He barely moves. I think I may have actually seen him yawning at one point. Whatever, his guitar still sounds good. Justin was way over on the other side of the stage, but from what I saw he pretty much just head-bangs most of the time, throwing down his pounding, complex bass.

The stage was set up with the aforementioned giant screen that was the entire width of the stage, about 9 feet tall and about 70 feet wide (or however wide the stage was), and that was the main visual element, but there were many, many more. Above that was a giant area that went all the way up to the ceiling that they could project things onto, and on the far right of that area was a huge 7-pointed star. There were also two big screens, about 8ft square, one each behind Adam and Justin on the sides. These could move up and down and be tilted. They had robotic light rigs, a really cool laser setup, and two more screens suspended high in the air at the extreme left and right sides, on which they showed what I like to call “mind-fuck” videos. About as much shit as the human brain can process, all perfectly choreographed to the music. Being in the 6th row was a little too close to take it all in, though.

The set was killer, and even though I knew the songs ahead of time, the live performance changes it to the point where you don’t exactly know what’s happening and you’re still excited when you hear some familiar beginning tones. Third Eye was an awesome, 15-minute opener. Jambi is a song I haven’t listened to very much, and I don’t know why, because it’s now one of my new favorites. Jambi is when they really started cranking the visuals. (-) Ions was the “let’s tone it down” section with a cool visual of an electric arc spark moving across the stage in time with the sound effect.

Then they kicked you in the ass with an extended, altered version of Stinkfist. I think it was during Stinkfist when they started using the lasers. Then Vicarious. If there was ever a song that could literally tear the roof off of a building, this is it. Danny was a godamned freight train, and Maynard held nothing back. EBA and The Patient were more awesomeness. Then they went old-school with Intolerance, with Maynard really screaming “You LIE, CHEAT, STEAL! You LIE, CHEAT, STEAL!” and the crowd going wild. Schism is an amazing song when you listen to it on an iPod. Seeing it live is almost a religious experience. Then… 46 & 2. God, what an amazing song. There’s just something about that opening bassline that quietly says “You are about to get raped in the ass by music. And you are going to love it.” Plus the drums are just phenomenal.

They left the stage after that, but an encore is so obligatory at any show that they didn’t even do a fake “Hey, we’re done now, but if you cheer loud enough we might come back” routine. They just left and put a really cool dark green-black-blue, spiral-ly, fractal-ly visual on the screen and played some ominous ambient track for about ten minutes. It’s not like we were wondering if they were going to come back out, and the crew was even setting up a smaller drum kit at the front of the stage the whole time. They came back and started Lateralus and had the drum battle, which was sweet to watch, and finished with Aenima. Every song in the set was extended and altered. A lot of times they would sort of piddle around between tracks, messing with the synthesizers and stuff to build it up.

Yeah, as someone else noted, there was a weird thing at the end. Right after the last song ended, Maynard quickly went around giving everyone high-fives (though they were really low-fives), and the other band members only seemed to half-acknowledge him, and then he immediately ran off stage. I don’t know, I guess it’s just the way they are. Maynard is weird. Adam, Justin, and Danny stayed around longer to wave and clap and thank the audience, and throw drumsticks and such. Danny got the biggest applause (and deservedly so), bowing and waving to the crowd.

FINAL THOUGHTS
WOW. Even as much as I had it built up in my head, it lived up to my expectations and more. The visual setup was just amazing, Maynard rocked it, and Danny tore the house down. The sound was actually really good. There might have been a few glitches, and Maynard was a bit muffled occasionally, but overall it sounded great. In the 6th row it really hit you in the gut, and my hearing will be a bit off for a few days. I brought cotton to put in my ears just in case I couldn’t take it, but I decided that hearing loss be damned, I was not going to muffle a TOOL concert. It kind of sucks that I had to go it alone, but without being certain that I’ll get another chance to see them, I had to go.

The 6th row was a little too close, I think. Ten more rows back and more towards the middle probably would have been perfect. One thing that really pissed me off is that someone at work said they were able to go to the box office just an hour before the show started and get 13th row floor seats for original face value (about $75), without even having to pay any bullshit TicketMaster fees. Yeah, I paid over $200 through an online scalper (sorry – “broker”). How the hell does the box office still have floor tickets to a show that sold out in less than an hour?

Last edited by Double J; 07-12-2010 at 08:24 PM..
Old 07-12-2010, 06:17 PM   #23
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Join Date: Jul 2010
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Re: 07.10.2010 - Seattle, WA @ Key Arena

This will be a very long review by a first-time TOOL show-goer. It looks massive, but it'll probably only take about 5 minutes to read.

THE BUILDUP
This was my first show. I’ve been a TOOL fan for a long time, but only really got into them since between Aenima and Lateralus (which is still a long time ago), and before this I had never seen them live. I had no idea they were even on tour until I randomly heard a radio commercial advertising that tickets were going on sale in a few days. Apparently the show was not on the original schedule, and they added it just weeks before the tour started. I believe this is the first time they’ve been in Seattle since 2006. I’m still pissed that I missed the show at The Gorge, so I was burning to see them. They sold out in less than hour, and so to the scalpers I went. I only know a couple of other people who are big fans, and they either couldn’t go or wouldn’t drop the cash to get floor seats, so ended up going solo. Their loss.

I had a couple of concerns, mainly that Key Arena is not known for stellar sound, and that the band might not be very energetic since they just did a show in Vancouver the night before. I was also kind of bummed that it was all assigned seating with no general admission.

THE SHOW
I was at the very end of the 6th row, all the way to the left (MY left, on Adam’s side of the stage). I still think the pulsing mosh pit of general admission really adds to the energy of a show, but I discovered that having an assigned seat also has some major advantages. I could go to the bathroom and not have to fight my way back to a good spot through 5,000 people. I didn’t have people’s sweaty BO all over me (please, concert-goers – I know you love your “alternative” lifestyle, but you’re in public now… TAKE A SHOWER!), and I didn’t have a crowd surfer kicking me in the back of the head every 5 minutes. I am 6’3” so visibility is usually not an issue. However, being in the end seat and very close to the stage meant that I was right in the security hornet’s nest. I wasn’t going to get away with anything (but I did manage to take one blurry photo with my iPhone).

The opening band was “Rajas.” Never heard of them. They were OK. The drummer was really good. This was probably the most tightly scheduled rock concert I’ve ever been to. Rajas went on at about 8:05 and played five or six songs, getting off the stage by about 8:40. The crew started setting up for TOOL. Then at about 8:57 they started playing that super-deep thumping bass track over the speakers to let everybody in the arena know the show was about to start. Lights went down just after 9.

I knew the setlist beforehand, of course. They started with some subtle visuals and repeated the “Think for yourself; question authority” line over and over. Then Adam, Justin, and Danny came out to huge cheers, and assumed their usual spots. They started picking away at Third Eye and then a shadowed Maynard appeared on the platform left of Danny, and the effects started in earnest. Maynard started with the mohawk, but would later don the cowboy hat.

The entire back of the stage was one giant, long, bright screen that displayed crazy high-def visuals. For the whole show, Maynard was an almost-totally black silhouette in front of it, never once a spotlight on him. It was fucking awesome. He was like this perfect human shadow puppet in front of a mind-blowing graphics and light show, doing his hunched, jerking style of moving, waving his cowboy hat, dancing, screaming and kicking – just really getting into it, but in a weird subdued way like only Maynard does. He was, in essence, exactly as I imagined, and it rocked. The only thing was that, from my perspective, a lot of time Adam was directly in my line of sight to Maynard, but it wasn’t a huge deal.

Danny, however, steals the show. The man is a machine, there’s no two ways about it. There are drummers, there are good drummers, there are spectacular drummers, and then there’s Danny. Seeing it live, you really see that without him, there is no TOOL. He pounds and crashes like a god throwing down thunder and lightning with laser precision. I can’t describe it, you just have to see it. Adam is kind of a stump. I was closest to him, so I got the best look at him. He barely moves. I think I may have actually seen him yawning at one point. Whatever, his guitar still sounds good. Justin was way over on the other side of the stage, but from what I saw he pretty much just head-bangs most of the time, throwing down his pounding, complex bass.

The stage was set up with the aforementioned giant screen that was the entire width of the stage, about 9 feet tall and about 70 feet wide (or however wide the stage was), and that was the main visual element, but there were many, many more. Above that was a giant area that went all the way up to the ceiling that they could project things onto, and on the far right of that area was a huge 7-pointed star. There were also two big screens, about 8ft square, one each behind Adam and Justin on the sides. These could move up and down and be tilted. They had robotic light rigs, a really cool laser setup, and two more screens suspended high in the air at the extreme left and right sides, on which they showed what I like to call “mind-fuck” videos. About as much shit as the human brain can process, all perfectly choreographed to the music. Being in the 6th row was a little too close to take it all in, though.

The set was killer, and even though I knew the songs ahead of time, the live performance changes it to the point where you don’t exactly know what’s happening and you’re still excited when you hear some familiar beginning tones. Third Eye was an awesome, 15-minute opener. Jambi is a song I haven’t listened to very much, and I don’t know why, because it’s now one of my new favorites. Jambi is when they really started cranking the visuals. (-) Ions was the “let’s tone it down” section with a cool visual of an electric arc spark moving across the stage in time with the sound effect.

Then they kicked you in the ass with an extended, altered version of Stinkfist. I think it was during Stinkfist when they started using the lasers. Then Vicarious. If there was ever a song that could literally tear the roof off of a building, this is it. Danny was a godamned freight train, and Maynard held nothing back. EBA and The Patient were more awesomeness. Then they went old-school with Intolerance, with Maynard really screaming “You LIE, CHEAT, STEAL! You LIE, CHEAT, STEAL!” and the crowd going wild. Schism is an amazing song when you listen to it on an iPod. Seeing it live is almost a religious experience. Then… 46 & 2. God, what an amazing song. There’s just something about that opening bassline that quietly says “You are about to get raped in the ass by music. And you are going to love it.” Plus the drums are just phenomenal.

They left the stage after that, but an encore is so obligatory at any show that they didn’t even do a fake “Hey, we’re done now, but if you cheer loud enough we might come back” routine. They just left and put a really cool dark green-black-blue, spiral-ly, fractal-ly visual on the screen and played some ominous ambient track for about ten minutes. It’s not like we were wondering if they were going to come back out, and the crew was even setting up a smaller drum kit at the front of the stage the whole time. They came back and started Lateralus and had the drum battle, which was sweet to watch, and finished with Aenima. Every song in the set was extended and altered. A lot of times they would sort of piddle around between tracks, messing with the synthesizers and stuff to build it up.

Yeah, as someone else noted, there was a weird thing at the end. Right after the last song ended, Maynard quickly went around giving everyone high-fives (though they were really low-fives), and the other band members only seemed to half-acknowledge him, and then he immediately ran off stage. I don’t know, I guess it’s just the way they are. Maynard is weird. Adam, Justin, and Danny stayed around longer to wave and clap and thank the audience, and throw drumsticks and such. Danny got the biggest applause (and deservedly so), bowing and waving to the crowd.

FINAL THOUGHTS
WOW. Even as much as I had it built up in my head, it lived up to my expectations and more. The visual setup was just amazing, Maynard rocked it, and Danny tore the house down. The sound was actually really good. There might have been a few glitches, and Maynard was a bit muffled occasionally, but overall it sounded great. In the 6th row it really hit you in the gut, and my hearing will be a bit off for a few days. I brought cotton to put in my ears just in case I couldn’t take it, but I decided that hearing loss be damned, I was not going to muffle a TOOL concert. It kind of sucks that I had to go it alone, but without being certain that I’ll get another chance to see them, I had to go.

The 6th row was a little too close, I think. Ten more rows back and more towards the middle probably would have been perfect. One thing that really pissed me off is that someone at work said they were able to go to the box office just an hour before the show started and get 13th row floor seats for original face value (about $75), without even having to pay any bullshit TicketMaster fees. Yeah, I paid over $200 through an online scalper (sorry – “broker”). How the hell does the box office still have floor tickets to a show that sold out in less than an hour?

Last edited by Double J; 07-12-2010 at 08:24 PM..
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