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Madison Square Garden, New York October 1, 2001 By C. Bottomley Tool are America's unlikeliest rock superstars, a throwback to those '70s days when all a "real" musician needed was a working knowledge of Bach, a copy of Robert Anton Wilson's The Illuminati Papers to roll up on, and a severe charisma deficit. The bonus is Tool rock frighteningly hard. For the first of two sold-out nights at Madison Square Garden, the quartet stuck to their strengths. Although guitarist Adam Jones was momentarily deserted onstage to batter the hell out of a five-note riff at the end of "Reflection," Tool's real wattage is in the rhythm section. Kicking off the set with a brutal bass run into "The Grudge," the fingers of the impossibly hairy Justin Chancellor blurred as he shoved noise into every crevice. Behind him, overshadowed by a conspicuous gong, drummer Danny Carey seemed to channel Led Zeppelin's John Bonham, keeping Tool stepping to the strict complexities of Eastern polyrhythms. There was a lot of work to be done. Songs found on their chart-topping third album, Lateralus, were segued together to form punishing 20-minute-long suites, but the group can't ride a melody for more than a few moments without abruptly switching gears. Utilizing minimal lighting that fully disregarded the band members, Tool weren't much to look at, either. Taking Alt.rock Anonymity Syndrome to ridiculous lengths, singer Maynard James Keenan delivered his vocals from the back of the stage; basically he was a silhouette wriggling like a pinned moth before a huge video screen. Keenan's rich baritone is not without character, but Tool's stage presence could make Five for Fighting seem like Van Halen. Perhaps the disinterest in drama makes sense, because all Tool's trappings are in their music. Incorporating arcane projections to illustrate each song, their iconography unfortunately implies that there is less than meets the ear. Keenan is fond of lines that sound like he swallowed a dictionary. But the convoluted sentiment "Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion" (uh, right) hasn't stopped "Schism" from becoming a massive radio hit. Their visuals are pretentious - like a high school film class. With the band in darkness, the audience was served not only projections of beasts who failed the audition for an Iron Maiden LP cover, but shivering life models (we're all naked underneath, you know) being flailed by sinister machines. It felt like puberty was going to strike at any moment. Roaring along to "Sober" from Tool's first album, Undertow, the crowd was centered more on feeling than thinking. And what they were feeling was Chancellor's algebra vectoring their entrails. "Remember this feeling you're having," Keenan said as his group gathered around the drum kit to deliver set-ender "Lateralus" its ritual pummeling. "Take it home and create something positive with it." Live, Tool are too elliptical to be much more than loud, but their brave old world hasn't stopped growing yet. Read our review of Lateralus. |
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