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I'm not making a value judgment on the song either way, but I do think the various comments about how it sounds like an AI-generated Tool song are partly because the song very deliberately quotes various Tool songs. It's not accidental- there are certain riffs or concepts in there that are purposely evocative of Jimmy, 46&2, and Lateralus (and apparently Reflection, according to some of you). Chalk me up as one of the people who felt dead inside when I first heard it, as though I could no longer access the joy of adolescence. But after listening to the song repeatedly it really grew on me, like most Tool songs. I still think it's probably worse than anything in Lateralus/10,000 Days, but only by a somewhat narrow margin. I wasn't aware until this album that their general writing process involved Maynard writing and recording vocals once all the other parts were essentially recorded and done. It seems obvious when you listen to the new song, but I have to say that he seems much more integrated into the older material. It's especially hard to imagine how Lateralus was written without his early input. In any case, it sounds like this album is going to be a blend of Lateralus/10,000 Days, which is I think all I was entitled to. There's been a trend of the pillars of my pop culture life coming back from the dead in my late twenties/early thirties, and it's super depressing to realize that even if the output is objectively as good as the old stuff, I've grown past it.
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Aug 25, 2019 14:47
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Nail Rat posted:Since no Tool thread is complete without terrible lists, this is how I see it right now: Does the whole album sound similar to FI in terms of it being a sort of generic blend of Lateralus/10k days?
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Aug 26, 2019 02:52
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What are you guys talking about? I’m legitimately naive about this. Can you point to a specific point in a recording?
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Aug 26, 2019 19:04
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Colonel Whitey posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg-ERheCn6A Interesting. I can’t pick that up at all. Congrats on your excellent hearing 
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Aug 26, 2019 20:10
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my bony fealty posted:yep that's the part, "the walls come down..." is where I always just go shiiittt It does make me a bit sad that they sort of locked in to their sound with Lateralus and never departed much. Despite my insistence that Lateralus is on another level than 10,000 Days (and AEnima trumping both by a lightyear), I have to confess that if I was naive to Tool and you presented me all of the songs on Lateralus/10k Days out of order I wouldn’t be able to confidently parse them into two albums. And from what I’ve heard of FI this will largely be true again. That Tool sound that emerged with Lateralus all seems to revolve around the part writing between Adam and Justin and how Justin basically writes bass parts like he’s a lead guitarist. I think it works to great effect a lot of the time, but AEnima sounds so much more sonically diverse than its successors. It’s remarkable how much Adam relied on unconventional sounds on AEnima as well. He used to use so much more pick scraping, feedback, etc.
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Aug 29, 2019 19:38
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Yeah I never understand the hate the supposed "filler" tracks get... it's such a necessary palate cleanser. I would welcome more of them.
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Aug 30, 2019 16:43
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Nail Rat posted:I do think it was bold to end with an interlude track on this one though. I felt like 7empest has an air of finality to it, but here come a bunch of loving animals shouting. I mean, how is that different than Lateralus/10k Days?
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Aug 30, 2019 19:01
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One thing that will take getting used to is Maynard’s absence. So many classic Tool songs lean on him heavily for their emotional climax (try to imagine 46&2 without “46&2 is just ahead of me...” or Pushit without “there will be no other way” or Schism without “between supposed brothers...” or The Patient without it’s vocal harmony or the aforementioned Rosetta Stoned”). I think that lack of vocal narrative is what is driving some people to call this album more “jam band”-esque... it’s not clear that the vocals are taking you on a journey. You have to rely more on the instrumentation to do that on this album.
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Aug 31, 2019 16:26
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TOOT BOOT posted:I have the same kind of ambivalent feeling towards this as I do Eat The Elephant. It's very jarring to jump forward 15 years with a band. Eat the Elephant seemed utterly bereft of interesting moments, it felt to me like it had absolutely no reason for existing. I was actually astonished they released it given how dramatically worse it is than their previous work. Regardless of how anyone feels about this album, I don’t think you can make the argument that Fear Inoculum doesn’t seem like a work of enormous effort and care. I’m not sure I particularly love it, but I have to acknowledge that they aren’t just going through the motions
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Sep 1, 2019 04:02
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Nail Rat posted:I believe Tool when they say it's not their last album. Some of the stuff that was going on behind the scenes, it's actually very understandable that it took 13 years (when combined with the fact that they don't need the money). They average 6.5 years between albums at this point. The three albums they’ve released since AEnima took 5, 5, and 13 years, respectively. FI also sounds like such a career summary to me, with the recycled riffs and Adam saying he finally got to use some concepts hanging around since AEnima. I’m not saying they won’t put out a new album, but another album feels about as likely as another My Bloody Valentine album
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Sep 6, 2019 14:57
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Did anyone else see them on the first Lateralus tour? I remember it so vividly because of how formative it was for me in my early adolescence. One thing I’m not sure if I’m making up though- did they bring out two acrobats in the schism makeup to hang from the ceiling and swing around? I remember it like it was a dream.
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Sep 7, 2019 01:31
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Yes I remember a rain of red glitter. I remember some rumor that sounds especially weird in retrospect that Danny Carey had somehow destroyed his drum set and turned it into confetti which they dropped on the crowd. Who knows. Reminiscing about that Lateralus tour does make me miss those last years of monoculture where it felt like not every music or film event was transient and quickly forgotten or ignored by 99% of the population.
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Sep 9, 2019 05:25
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It is pretty startling how long they had to work on this album and yet the form and structure of it feels utterly absent. 7empest is only the worst offender here. When you go back and listen to their previous albums, it's an extremely stark difference. AEnima stretched the typical verse-chorus-verse structure of songs at times, and always to great effect. Many of the songs are plainly conventional in their structure but experiment elsewhere (Stinkfist, H, 46&2). Even when they went off script, the contrast between structure and noise or improvisation felt very deliberate (Pushit, Third Eye). Lateralus, which is sort of the inflection point for the band, represents the apotheosis of the sound they've been utilizing ever since- absolutely no "noise" (no interludes of pick scraping, feedback etc) just riff after riff after riff. The interplay between Adam/Justin was sort of perfected on Lateralus, and they haven't departed from that type of part writing or the general timbre of their instruments since. 10,000 Days is basically a continuation on that theme, but Fear Inoculum represents this weird breakdown in their sound where, on a measure-to-measure basis it's very clear Tool and there aren't exactly weak spots, but over the span of the song it fails to cohere or feel that it has any directionality. Lateralus (the title track) is probably the best example of how this can/should work. Instead everything feels a bit more like Triad. Add to that the fact that the band has traditionally relied on the vocals for the emotional peak of the song, and they're unable to do that on Fear Inoculum, and it makes some of the album feel kind of AI-generated.
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Jun 29, 2020 20:26
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If I could remove anything it’d be Invincible, which kinda makes me cringe. Sounds like a very bloated A Perfect Circle. The guitar work is so much more Billy Howerdel than Adam Jones. I hate it
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Jun 30, 2020 15:57
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I wonder if, for a band like Tool that has such a small catalogue, the majority of which is over 20+ years old, if live performance feels more like putting on a Broadway play every night for decades. How many times has this band played Stinkfist live at this point? 10,000,000? I'm surprised that playing these songs over and over doesn't get so old that they're motivated to write more music (my fervent wish for them).
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Oct 11, 2023 19:41
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| # ¿ May 8, 2024 22:02 |
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When did they start saying stuff like that about FI? 2009?
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Oct 12, 2023 00:25
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