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There was a rare sight on the U.S. album charts a couple of months ago: a heavy rock album sitting perched at No. 1.

Tool’s reign there was brief — a week sandwiched between Taylor Swift and Post Malone — but it nevertheless confirmed there remains a fervent audience for the sort of sonically dense, musically sophisticated music that has been the quartet’s stock-in-trade for three decades.

The evidence was there again Saturday night at Little Caesars Arena, where a full house of devoted, very locked-in fans took in a heady, head-warping set from the band as it tours in support of that record, “Fear Inoculum,” its first since 2006.

Drummer Danny Carey sported a full Detroit Pistons uniform — complete with shorts and Blake Griffin’s No. 23 — while a Mohawk-wigged Maynard James Keenan stalked, crouched and cavorted atop a pair of platforms flanking the kit. With guitarist Adam Jones and bassist Justin Chancellor up front, they wove a set of intense prog-metal whose precise interlocking parts often swelled to epic levels.

The band’s new material was well represented, as songs such as “Invincible” and show-opener “Fear Inoculum” unfolded with the power of vintage Tool, edging closer and closer like menacing musical glaciers before breaking the tension with cathartic crescendos. “Chocolate Chip Trip” followed a late intermission to give Carey a dazzling, polyrhythmic showcase that let him show off the chops that have sealed his place on metal’s all-time-best list.

“Anema” was anthemic; “The Pot” channeled a molten groove; “Vicarious” cut with jagged edges; and “Parabol”-“Parabola” showed off the band’s way around intricately structured, multipart works. While Saturday was foremost a listening experience, there was a potent visual element to go with it, including arresting laser arrays on numbers like “Pneuma” and scenes from the band’s dark, trippy classic videos.

The sound was reliably loud but exquisitely mixed, making it easy to absorb the complex and finely tuned interplay among the four players as the show moved through its two hours and 15 minutes.

There was little chatter onstage, though Keenan did take a moment early in the night to nod to his roots.

“Hello, Michigan — behind Arizona, the second-best state in the continental United States,” said the 55-year-old singer, a longtime Arizona resident who spent his formative young-adult years in western Michigan.

While the enigmatic band has loosened up of late — its catalog finally hit streaming platforms in August — Tool still grasps the enduring power of mystique. The show’s opening stretch was performed behind a gauzy stringed curtain ringing the stage, and Keenan delivered his howling vocals often cloaked in shadows at back.

A strict photo-video policy was also in force. (While media outlets were invited to photograph the opening song, the Free Press declined because of usage and rights restrictions.) As signs and announcements at LCA made clear, fans were barred from using their mobile devices, under threat of ejection.

But as the concert arrived at its closing number, the 1996 hit “Stinkfist,” Keenan at last offered an olive branch.

“Security, stand down!” the singer announced with dramatic flair. Fans were now allowed to “play with” their cell phones and such, he declared — “even though it’s kind of annoying.”

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

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