Progressive rock/metal legends TOOL have unveiled their long-promised new music in the form of the title-track for their new LP called “Fear Inoculum”! The epic composition marks their first new studio track in 13 years and offers a variety of beautiful patterns and impressive vocal performance from Maynard James Keenan, who commented:
“I feel like this is [about] wisdom through age, through experience. Hopefully through aging you find wisdom in some of the things you’ve encountered. Learning from your mistakes, learning from your successes. So if anything is a broad stroke of this album, it would be embracing where we are right now, acknowledging where we’ve come from and some of the things we’ve grown through.”
“inoculum” is the substance placed in a syringe to deliver an inoculation, and so the suggestion is the deliberate injection of fear. Inoculation is the act of introducing a bacteria to a new place in order to allow the place to respond to it; in terms of healthcare the aim is for the human body to identify it as a negative influence and develop antibodies to kill it, so that if it should ever return the body is ready to react and destroy any resulting infection. So in the terms of the Tool album, it could suggest the deliberate injection of fear wth the intention of preparing humans to deal with it. – read the full explanation on UltimateClassicRock.com or Genius
Adam Jones added:
“Things like, ‘I’m gonna wear socks with sandals. I don’t give a fuck what people think, I’m just gonna be comfortable.’ [laughs] So it’s about the little things in life. It’s making those choices and moving on and growing. There’s a little bit of Frank Herbert’s Dune in that, so I’m into it. I’m so excited for this new record. The songs are very long but they are like movements. It’s like two or three songs in one, but they relate. They flow. So I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes. But I am ecstatic.
Drummer Danny Carey concludes in an interview with Guitar World:
“They pretty much ended up that way. There were times when I thought, ‘Ok, this is getting kind of ridiculous.’ [Laughs] I was a bit worried about it because I kinda like the contrast of having short songs and long songs, but all of them ended up being really long. So I had to step back and go, ‘If this is where we are as a band and this is where we’re meeting, I just have to accept it.’ I try to look at it as movements within an individual song and the overall piece is a symphony or something. As long as it’s moving forward and progressing and keeping people’s attention, I’m not too worried about the length.
Lyrics:
[Verse 1]
Immunity, long overdue
Contagion, I exhale you
Lying, I opened up to you
Venom in mania
Now, contagion, I exhale you[Interlude]
The deceiver says, he says
You belong to me
You don’t wanna breathe the light of the others
Fear the light, fear the breath
Fear the others for eternity
But I hear them now, inhale the clarity
Hear the venom, the venom in
What you say inoculated
Bless this immunity
Bless this immunity
Bless this immunity[Chorus]
Exhale, expel
Recast my tale
Weave my allegorical elegy[Verse 2]
Enumerate all that I’m to do
Calculating steps away from you
My own mitosis
Growing through delusion from mania[Chorus]
Exhale, expel
Recast my tale
Weave my allegorical elegy[Bridge]
Forfeit all control
You poison, you spectacle
Exorcise the spectacle
Exorcise the malady
Exorcise the disparate
Poison for eternity
Purge me and evacuate
The venom and the fear that binds me[Outro]
Unveil now, lift away
I see you runnin’
Deceiver chased away
A long time comin’
