review from the Vancouver Sun.....
"In an age when success hinges largely on your ability to constantly deliver gossip, news and updates about your whereabouts in 140 characters or less, Tool is an anomaly.
In fact, it could be argued frontman Maynard James Keenan and company have uttered less than 140 words in the press concerning Tool’s progress over the last four years.
It has been this long since the prog/art/experimental metal quartet’s last release, 10,000 Days.
And although rumours abound regarding the band currently working on a forthcoming fifth full-length studio album, trying to ascertain when it will see the light of day is just as mind-boggling as trying to understand what Keenan is really trying to say in his dark, wounded, psychedelia-injected poetry.
That’s not a slight to Keenan or Tool in any way. In fact, it’s what makes Tool grand.
The same way King Crimson and Pink Floyd lived away from the media spotlight and preferred twisting their musical genius into enigmatic visual constructions — Tool’s music videos are still some of the best you’ll ever see — Tool has always been a band that loves to stay in the background.
Look at Keenan, dodging the lights and hogging the shadows in concert. Look at guitarist and visual mastermind Adam Jones, barely seen under the swirl of the projections he helped, in large part, design. Feel drummer Danny Carey and bassist Justin Chancellor’s presence, especially in your rib cage, more than you stare at them.
And although the band is often less the focal point than the spellbinding stage presentations, which includes everything from strobes to lasers to screens featuring the band’s signature stop-motion and CGI animations, Tool still holds the top spot as the “thinking man’s metal band” and its musical skills far surpass that of mere pop mortals.
No new material in four years? Still, what a trip and what a treat a Tool show is, and Friday night’s at Rogers Arena (so long, GM Place) was no different.
The sold-out offering began with psychedelic rockers Rajas, a Los Angeles-based act fronted by composer Ben Sherazi, who originally conceived the Sanskrit-inspired project with James Maxwell and Aaron Harris of Isis (another past Tool opener).
The band, now consisting of Sherazi, bassist Paul Jones, drummer/producer Gino Barboni and “synthesist” and longtime Timothy Leary associate Vince DeFranco, delivered some heavy grooves from its self-titled debut released in June.
Not exactly primo stuff vocals-wise (and a sizable chunk of the crowd missed it due to terribly long lines at the gates), but Rajas’ half-hour set made for a logical segue into Tool’s 100-minute epic offering, which, conveniently enough, kicked off with a recorded intro by Dr. Leary himself (“Think for yourself, question authority”), leading into Keenan’s ode to LSD, Third Eye.
In front of a wall of morphing fractals, Keenan’s shadow danced, his distorted voice screaming out of a megaphone slung around his shoulder.
By the end of the 10-minute monster opening track, it was clear Tool wasn’t just playing by numbers.
“OK then,” Keenan said. “It’s all gonna work out.”
The band then lunged into Jambi, with its wild dynamic shifts and odd time signatures.
Again, Keenan preferred the shelter of the low riser at the back of the stage, his shadow this time dancing before a blood-red collage of CGI animation in sync with the band’s thunderous riffs.
When the song’s big break hit, the floor erupted, Jones delivering a razor sharp solo that, if only a brief moment, put one of Tool’s members in the spotlight.
And there lies Tool’s greatest asset: the music.
No gimmicks, but plenty of frills, both on a visual scale and on a technical scale, and it all sounded so incredibly good.
Keenan’s voice, from its lowest whimper to its hugest scream, was crystalline even when filled with static, especially on the massive Stinkfist, which brought out one of Tool’s most devastating riffs (complete with stop-motion animation on screen).
It’s hard to believe that, 40 minutes into the show, we were barely four songs in, the fourth being Vicarious, which took its sweet time to explode in all its laser-filled, Floydian glory, the crowd at once enthralled, going wild or just plain stunned.
Tool was just getting started, more screens coming to life, more lasers streaming across the arena for Eon Blue Apocalypse and “oldie” Intolerance (from 1992’s Undertow), which Keenan introduced by likening the song to a Back to the Future moment.
It was pretty much all the jibber jabber you would get from Keenan all night, and the elusive frontman would remain in the background throughout the show, his shadow at times seen clasping a bottle, hanging on to the microphone or manning the synths on Schism, one of Tool’s biggest “singles.”
By the time the band wrapped the encore with Lateralus (Rajas’ drummer Gino Barboni helping out on the dual drums) and Aenema (“See, I told you it would work out,” Keenan announced), it was clear Tool, despite not having any new material, had come to deliver the goods.
Though, conceptually, it may have felt a bit weaker than, say, Muse’s concert at the Pacific Coliseum earlier this year, it was nonetheless a visual and auditory delight like few other contemporary acts — no matter what genre — can deliver."
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