Keenan’s attack on the desensitizing quality of television is far from an original idea, but his pointed attack is passionate enough for us to buy into his diatribe (“Cause I need to watch things die / From a distance / Vicariously, I live while the whole world dies / You all need it too, don’t lie”). “Vicarious” is quintessential Tool, centered around Jones’s serpentine riffs, Carey and bassist Justin Chancellor creating their typically massive rhythm section (tastefully punctuated by Carey’s trademark fills), the trio perfectly offsetting Maynard James Keenan’s seething vocals.
The American hard rock/metal landscape may have changed greatly since 2001, but Tool still knows how to appease the riff-craving masses, and it’s no surprise that the instant pleasers on 10,000 Days are the more aggressive tracks. The music may be sprawling, but at its best, for all the pomposity, there’s an impressive economy to the performances, be it in Danny Carey’s muscular drumming or Adam Jones’s underrated guitar prowess.
Which is a very good thing unlike young phenoms The Mars Volta, who mercilessly crammed last year’s Frances the Mute full of ostentatious instrumental flourishes, Tool follow a rather simple, disciplined formula, and work it to a tee. Many are under the misapprehension that Tool continually push the boundaries of modern rock music, but for all the overanalyzing of their music by devotees, the quartet remain one of the more minimalist bands operating under the “progressive rock” tag.
After all the anticipation and internet speculation, 10,000 Days turns out to be, in a way, Tool’s own version of Led Zeppelin’s Presence a massive, ponderous record that, while not without its merit, shows some serious chinks in the band’s armor for the first time.
After a pair of wildly popular albums, 1996’s scattershot, often brilliant Ænima, and 2001’s dark, dense opus Lateralus, both of which thrilling fans of the artier side of hard rock, and testing the patience of the many skeptics in the crowd, one had to wonder in what direction Tool would go next on their fourth full-length album in 13 years. The one drawback to having such artistic control over one’s product, however, is that having so much freedom can lead to the artist not knowing just how much is too much. When you insist that your albums’ packaging and artwork test the limits of how compact discs are designed and marketed, from lenticular images, to translucent booklets and X-ray style slipcases, to stereoscopic liner notes, and the record company hardly bats an eye, again, clout. When you can take five years to put out a new album, and still be assured of debuting at number one, you have clout. When your band can fill a 15,000 seat hockey arena with punters willing to shell out 60 bucks to hear a skinny guy in leather hot pants covered head to toe in blue makeup sing from a backlit, spinning riser at the rear of the stage, it’s clear you have clout in the music business.