The Persistent Complexity of Tool
Back with new music after a 13-year hiatus, the legendary metal band is as precise and devastating as it has always been.
“To hear a Tool song for the first time,” said Henry James—last night, in my dream—“is an impossibility.” Phantasmal Master, I think I know what you mean. Tool music, with its long, magisterial patterns and ever-tightening curves, its helical risings and huge breakdowns, its floating grids of chug and its steppings-off into the sublime, its boring bits and its thrilling bits and its bits that sound like other bits, is not susceptible to instant appreciation. Once is not enough; with Tool
