TOOL in the I.E.
Original poster art by Mike Gamble. Banner image by Nick M.W.
The masters of prog-metal macabre psychedelia rocked Ontario’s Toyota Arena.
I fell in love with music somewhere around fourth grade. There was this perfect storm of awesome music that played on radios back in the early 1990s. You could spin the “Wheel of Jams” in any genre and land on a song from artists like Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, or Nirvana, Metallica, and Depeche Mode, or Michael Jackson. I could go on and on name dropping artists because these were the days of legends. They were everywhere in the industry—both the well-established legends and the up-and-coming artists who were on their way. I had drank from the waters of Nirvana and breathed the rarified air of The Chronic at a young age, and I quickly succumbed to the almighty power of good jams.
Not long after that, I took a deep dive into the medium and swam through genres, fishing out albums and songs that spoke to me through rhythm and harmony. Sometimes the vehicle of that message was tender sonic love; other times it was a welcomed ravaging or my cochlea. Along this trip, shoulder deep past the borderline in the Mariana Trench of rock music, I discovered TOOL. Appropriately enough for this extended ocean metaphor I refuse to let die, it was Undertow that dragged me down into the void. Their sound then is not what it has evolved into, but “Sober” was different from the grunge and metal that dominated rock radio airwaves. That’s usually a good place to start when I hear new music.
“Oh, shit! I haven’t heard anything like that before.”
There is no comparison to TOOL. Their influences might be obvious, but they are peerless in their craft. Individually, each of the four members is playing this game with a 100-level skill set. Collectively, their musicianship borders on a spiritual experience. Their live show is in fact one.
On Saturday, February 17—a chilly but otherwise pleasant evening—TOOL made a tour stop at the Toyota Arena in Ontario, CA. This venue is a short So Cal freeway trip away from my fortress of domesticity, and I had not yet seen a band that I’ve loved for so long. I’d passed up a couple of opportunities when they were out here in the Inland Empire, but that shit wasn’t going to happen again. I attended my first TOOL concert with a friend and got what I expected: a mind-blowing show. Lead singer Maynard James Keenan nearly had to cancel on us because he was sick, but he gutted out a two-hour set. There’s nothing easy about what he does in the band. He makes it sound easy and effortless, but that’s how the great ones do it. Fortunately, though, the heavy lifting of this show, and I’m guessing every other TOOL performance, is done by Adam Jones and Danny Carey. Justin Chancellor brings the often competing guitar and drums into synchronicity before they inevitably diverge, but the live show is really about Carey and Jones. As impressive as Adams Jones is, Danny Carey plays like he’s from another planet.
TOOL’s brilliant sound is amplified by the incredible visual display that makes up the stage set. Five huge LED screens, stage floor to damn near the arena’s ceiling, form the stage backdrop. A row of three elevated platforms took up significant space across the stage, and each of those platforms had an LED screen as the front panel, facing the crowd. This extended the stage’s backdrop lightshow to the midground of the stage. In the foreground was enough space for Chancellor and Jones to walk about and engage the crowd. Lasers, stage lights, and smoke machines were added to deliver some wild visual mind-fuckery. I would show you pictures and video if I’d taken any, but I made it a point to keep my phone in my pocket and live the experience through my senses. Coincidentally, Maynard as the entire arena full of devotees to do the same thing or painfully receive his stinkfist.
If you have never seen TOOL but always wanted to, go before it’s too late. If you’ve seen them before, you know what I’m talking about.
Here’s a playlist of their setlist for the 2/17/24 Ontario, CA show I attended. There were a lot of bangers that didn’t make the cut, but TOOL played the shit out of these jams.
