I am a devoted, lifelong, unapologetic fan of the band Tool. I own all their albums on every available form of media, have 20 plus concert tees, a giant tattoo of the eye from the Aenima album on my inner arm, and I’ve flown to five states and logged over 4,000 driving miles to see them (which is more than I’ve done to visit my own family). If someone were to elevator pitch me to a stranger it would go like this:
“Nick is a comedian; has been his whole adult life. He has a weird obsession with coffee and a crazy-weird obsession with that band Tool. Yeah, the band that sang that “Sober” song in the ‘90s. I didn’t know they were around anymore either. He constantly tells me to listen to their albums, but they were only available on CDs until this week. Anyway, if I hear from Nick I’ll give you a call officer.”
However, I’m not writing this because I’m excited about their upcoming new album—Tool’s first in 13 years, due out at the end of August. I’m writing this because I don’t want them to release it.
One of the two longest running jokes about the band is the length of their songs—the shortest clocking in at 6 minutes and the longest at 14 and change. This was a point of pride for fans back in the late ‘90s. We looked down on those radio friendly bands.
The second joke is about how long it takes them to release albums. Since Tool’s creation in 1990 their discography is as follows:
Opiate EP, 1992
Undertow, 1993
Aenima, 1996
Lateralus, 2001
10,000 Days, 2006
There’s been nothing since 10,000 Days. That was 13 years ago. They have toured almost every year, but haven’t released any new material—not a song for a movie soundtrack or a random single just for the hell of it. Nothing. There has been 13 years of music journalists asking when the fuck this next album is coming out and guitarist Adam Jones replying with his favorite quote about the creative process: “It’s not ready when it’s done. It’s done when it’s ready.” Fair enough, Adam. I respect that, but at this point Tupac has released more material dead than Tool has alive.
This 13 year drought turned around on May 5 in Jacksonville, Florida when Tool played two brand new songs live in concert for the first time since 2006 (for the record, I have not listened to low-quality fan recordings of these new tracks, and I don’t want to). This is jaw dropping considering in the last 13 years I’ve seen more American presidents than new Tool songs. Most Tool fans rolled their eyes and joked that the next two songs will probably be done in 2050. We were wrong. A few shows later on this same summer tour, they announced a new album along with a release date: August 30, 2019. I felt excitement and nervousness. Then in late July, Maynard James Keenan announced the real title of an actual album: Fear Inoculum. I was stunned, not just by excitement, but of fear. That’s right you guys—I think this is [dramatic gulp] bad news.
They’re right when they say you don’t realize how much you love something until it’s gone. For years I thought I was missing music from my favorite band, but all these years I was getting something invaluable: a live experience locked in time. A safe haven. A Tool concert means instant access to the best memories, none of them clouded by those last few shitty albums you wish never came out or the young new fans that came with those shitty albums and spent the entire show getting obliterated and talking during every song except the latest single. It’s just us lifers. We stand and wait; the outside world paused and forgotten. The house lights go out. It’s pitch black. We collectively fill that darkness with a meditative calm followed by blood-curdling screams of carnal ecstasy before a 90-minute time capsule of explosive visual and sonic bliss whisks us away to a transcendent state of genre bending art metal. Each experience was as comforting as the one before it, like visiting a cozy winter cabin located inside a snow globe that’s inside a slightly larger winter cabin that’s inside of a grandmother’s soul. That was an experience safe from outsiders, one preserved for what seemed like eternity as Tool took more than a decade to add to their discography. The new album was some Orwellian goal, glimmering in the distance, non-existent, but just powerful enough to direct our emotions toward one committed outcome.
But, that all changes this August—that conserved musical relationship gets invaded by newness and outside interlopers. And it began on August 2, when Tool made their entire discography available on major streaming platforms and iTunes. This is technically good news—that is, until the day I walk into a Brooklyn juice bar and hear the warm, hypnotic bass riff from “46 & 2” drowned out by a blender full of kale and spirulina. I already know the feeling. I still remember the day I heard my favorite Radiohead song, “Let Down’,” in the frozen food section of a Trader Joe’s. I felt crushed like a bug in the ground.
As life drags on, very few things retain any purity. Everything that is good at one point becomes bad. Love fades. Relatives die. Your parents start watching Fox News. A lot of your dreams don’t come true, and worse, some become nightmares. I have found myself needing some sort of reliable source of untainted happiness. Tool is one of the few pure things left in my life. And that long wait for a new album brought fans together. Fans have spent more than a decade bonding over the lack of new Tool music. That camaraderie replaced the void that a new Tool album could fill. To love something is to suffer—and that’s what us Tool fans have done for 13 long years. The most comforting part of the light at the end of the tunnel is knowing you’ll never live to see what lies beyond it. Sounds rough, but that’s why they’re called diehards not dieeasys.
I’m not saying any of this is right. I still don’t fully understand these feelings. I do know I’m nervous. All this waiting, fantasizing and complaining and what if… what if it sucks? What if it’s anything less than pure, soul warping, face melting musical genius blessed by lightning from the gods and the Hell fires of Satan? What if it’s good, you might ask? Well, how can we—the diehard fans—be objective critics of a new album? Will we put up our blinders and just say it is great because we’re in too deep? Lying to ourselves is often easier than dismantling everything we’ve ever known and loved. And you better believe this is beyond love. Admitting something so fundamental to our consciousness would destroy the foundations of our musical identities causing a spiritual collapse that would render us broken and lost in the psychic rubble of our former selves unable to see, think, feel or hear.
I tried putting up the blinders with Guns ‘N Roses’s long-delayed album Chinese Democracy. I also tried when Metallica released Load. And Re-Load. And St. Anger and— sorry, let me rephrase: I tried that when Metallica didn’t retire after The Black Album. It still boggles my mind how Lars Ulrich tried taking down Napster considering Metallica’s newer music wasn’t even worth the low, low cost of $0.00. Don’t get me wrong, “Kill Em All,” “And Justice For All,” “Ride the Lightning,” and “Master of Puppets” will live in my heart forever, but anything after 1993’s The Black Album won’t even live on my hard drive. The most likely outcome of a new Tool album is that it simply will not—and cannot—live up to 13 years of built up anticipation and hype.
The truth is, I don’t want a new album. I haven’t for quite some time. I’m too old to love it like I once would have. The title alone has inoculated me with fear. As a hardcore fan, I think the most important thing they can do is not only push back the release of this new album for another 13 years, but also keep their music off streaming services, pull all existing CDs and vinyl off the shelves of every known record store in the free world, dispatch members of the Tool Army Fan Club all over Earth to collect CDs, tapes and records from anyone willing to part ways for the cause. Then, every copy collected along with the master recordings will then be placed in a vault so deep and so heavily guarded it will make NORAD look like a public park. This scarcity will only fuel the myth and legend and drive the hunger for this new album and keep Tool sacred. As a devoted, lifelong hardcore fan I have learned this: some things are never ready because they’re never done, and in doing so they become immortal.
Comedian. Writer. Nick Youssef is a Los Angeles-based comedian, writer and actor as well as hosts the Occasionally Awesome podcast on the All Things Comedy network.