Tool (2) – Fear Inoculum

High expectations may ruin life. Imagination makes us create preconceptions based on subjective ideals. It applies the same for life or for the expectancy of one album like this.
All this was propelled by the several years wait and the inmense reputation of creativeness, originality and virtuosism from each member of the band, one starts to imagine the work of the century.
In the end for me at least this work resulted in a very technical, intricate melodical, morphing piece, undoubtly a very well produced album but not the dimension of the thing i imagined. This work is pure subtlety.

First thing about the good things from the album is the production, so detailed, starting for the package, then comes the guitar work, the intersection of rhythmical and melodic structures puts this album as more elaborated, evolved and multi dimensionally concept, also less heavy, more "enlightened" version of "10.000 days" if you wish. The difference in here is that the industrial twist is absent here, as well as the ambient interludes, here the music as a whole is the atmosphere and melody has a key role in giving form to everything, more than ever. The drums and effects are more tribal, organic and complex than ever, very precise and mathematical, which opposed to the strong melodic sense of the music gives this feeling of the band going further in their experimentation with sacred numbers and the golden rule. Take notice at the tempos, the rhythm changes and the melodic structure of the music. This album is almost sacral music, Bach would be delighted.

There's something kind of scary in some aspect of the bands message now seen in retrospective. "Fear inoculum", the title of the album and starter song talks about a conspiration of fear coming through humanity in many ways and forms. And the lyrics are very explicit about certain things that are happening now, in our age of covid hysteria, mass confinement, distancing, virality from life and other people, not just viruses. Inuculation of fear.

Another track that is very descriptive of our zeitgeist is "Culling voices". Our age of desensitization and psychopathy. In general the album is so subtle, at so many levels that results very intriguing to recapitulate over it over and over in order to find different traces and spots to observe it, to feel it.

So perhaps that is where the album is otherworldly, it's subtlety. For the ones who cannot capture it and remain just perceiving or expecting the more shallow aspect of the music, like if it were a brand, or a funded preconception, an ideal prefabricated by your ego in these last 10 years, the album will probably won't sound anything more than technically elaborated and lesser, but in that other aspect, the one from detail, subtlety and aural metanarrative is where it's deeper secret lies.
Evolve.
Receive it, with love.

Good comeback.

Better and more atmospheric than the overrated 'Lateralus'.

I don't know why I am so pleased to see that Lustmord had some level of involvement with this release. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯