Last year saw the much-anticipated return of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in his primary music vehicle, the one whose output was once called “prog rock from Mars.” As it came, it went. At least this old fan isnt mixing these songs into currently active playlists, for all the absorbing their long-hauling riffage took back in September ’19. It’s not just that the record was “both overworked and undercooked,” *twirls moustache.* (I kinda think all of these “ten years in the making” efforts tend to be that? Like The Making does a peak-and-dip into Tryhard Valley?) Methinks the problem is that Tool no longer have any useful philosophy to offer. The occult liberation of the individual is a dead narrative. What remains is “warrior / strugglin’ / to remain / consequential.” His words, not mine.
Last time Tool had a record out I was in high school, and I was right in the target group. I had all the bad juju to shake out, whether that means “stepping through my Shadow,” or just “getting laid.” Tool came along like a mystery religion promising psychedelic pathways out of the frayed coccoon of late adolescence. It wasn’t just the initiatory freak-out of the videos or the relative difficulty of the compositions; there were always enough longhairs around to politely inform you these aspects of Tool were metallurgically entry-level, if distinctive as heavy rock. It wasn’t even the layer of tongue-in-cheek and cryptic references and Maynard’s Dick that kept message boards chugging along[1]. It was how the fires of rage were tempered by this Gnostic longing for a true self, or at least a better one. For every “get off your fucking cross / we need the fucking space / to nail the next fool martyr” there was a “child’s rhyme stuck in my head / it said that life is but a dream / I’ve spent so many years in question / to find I’ve known this all along.” This is straight-up Gnosticism, the Divine Spark buried in the muck of the material[2]. At least once per record Maynard let himself have a meltdown like “Hooker With A Penis” — embarrassing in retrospect, but probably seemed ‘cathartic’ at the moment, and good enough filler. But that felt like nitty-gritty, ugly but necessary purges clearing out for enlightenment[3]. On the other side awaits True You. The One you left behind. [ Ꙩ Ꙫ ]
Jump-cut, thirteen years later, to what I shall call “the catastrophe of my personality.” I walk through empty parking lots under the grayest weather; my girlfriend doesn’t know what to do with me. Meanwhile, Maynard is charged with a backlog of sexual iniquities. In ways large or small, women have a lot of slack to pick up from men’s spiritual journeys[4] [ Ꙫ Ꙩ Ꙫ ], and there is something distinctly male about the bildungsroman, isn’t there? A kind of me-against-the-world mentality underneath it all.
My bildung had taken me to what felt like an exit from Untapped Potential, where I met the challenge with all the enthusiasm and goodwill I could muster. I get owned hard; I’m in pieces. Tool drop on my Spotify just when I’ve been made to remember what high school felt like; right when I need them, then. Then Fear Innoculum comes out. Right on the money? On paper, if that’s what you mean. Because it sinks in as sure as I tune out.
Tool lyrics do read a bit like Maynard’s therapy notes: “I’ve been wallowing in my own confused / and insecure delusions.” And that’s what most people need, therapy. But Maynard was the kind of rockstar who put you on a walkabout, stepping through your shadow and prying open your third eye. In the same lyric, he continues: “I wanna feel the change consume me / feel the outside turning in / I wanna feel the metamorphosis and cleansing I’ve endured.” I was in therapy at the time, but I hadn’t stopped believing in the Seeking and the Child and this cataclysm of Metamorphosis that’s sure to visit me at some point. And what do you know, it did, just not how I expected. The Potential didn’t have that much to do with it even, it’s just that no one else had that baggage, that is to say no one else was a child in any psychic sense. Besides, if ‘Forty Six and Two’ is ‘Break on Through’ for the post-grunge generation, it’s not shy about the breaking: “[I choose to] kill and die and to be / paranoid and to lie / hate and fear and to do / what it takes to move through[5]” They sure did what it takes to move through at the Workshop. I wasn’t, and I’m not, but I bummed my girlfriend out for months on end.
Now look. It’s right there in my own quotes that Maynard doesn’t want to be anyone’s saint, and it’s good that he’s baring his ruthlessness[6]. But what’s not good enough is that this doesn’t acknowledge that the old project of dismantling the ego is egoism par excellence. It’s just another coil of the serpent, if not the final coil, whereupon the serpent turns into a guy in flannel trying to convince you all politics is equally bad[7]. Frankly, any meaningful progress I’ve seen in the personal realm came through other people, even if I paid them for it. You don’t solve ego with more ego; [ Ꙭ Ꙭ Ꙭ ] put another way, before you solve the personal or the political you have to solve the social. It’s the only way to move forward, which is my problem with occult self-actualization narratives be they in Tool songs or Grant Morisson comics or wherever else: they don’t move you forward. In practice, if you accept there is so much already in you, waiting, you end up waiting[8]. Anticipating, which is all too human, but also bad life practice. I mean I’m sure some people would make proper initiates. I know I wouldn’t. I just nursed my dreamiest bits on nights and weekends until the world shoved my face in them. Eh, what can you do? You get new bits.
So Fear Innoculum charted high then fell on its ass. Why? Well, for me because it’s more of what brought me here, because the Toolkit hadn’t broken me out of high school loner ego hell but kept me in it. But I think also because, on some cultural level, we’ve all come to silently agree on this stuff. Please, someone point me at a running quest for authenticity that doesn’t feel like it’s clamoring for subscribers. A yogi, an uncritical Hesse reader, anything. Any seeker type in your socials who isn’t a sham or just a quaint joke, hopelessly oblivious of the tangle of contradictions the capitalist democracy has birthed him in. Any dreamer who thinks their passion or calling, their art, or even their space exploration startup, for that matter, is coupled with any sense of wonder and they’re not just a product of the dominant individualist ethos. Culture is out, ‘content’ is where it’s at, and maybe it’s just as well. In the 21st century, we’re all just trying to give nice things to each other or else reek of talent shows and carreerrism. And then so much of this is wrapped up in the crisis of masculinity. There are probably as many search results for “delusions of grandeur” as there are for “man tears will be shed.”
What is left when the Seer has no Beyond to see into? Besides inviting the West Coast’s rising sea levels to drown Hollywood in ominous guitar sludge, or his bloodsucking haters (hello?) to choke? Rage can be awesome, cathartic, justified, necessary. More often than not it’s just impotent. More often than not, Seekers with followings end up feasting on them.
Still, all the other Tool albums remain pretty awesome, Salival included, and when Spotify gave me the most-listened for 2019 they had made the year list within a quarter. And I kinda think my first new bits were new favorite Tool songs. Not spiritual renewal by any means, in fact a step deeper into the silt. But let’s leave Maynard’s supposedly redemptive ego trip or his critique of L.A. society aside for a moment and enjoy the portentous storytelling of ‘Jambi,’ where he just tries to make it work with someone. ‘Pushit’ doesn’t need to be restored, neither does ‘H.’ ‘Parable/Parabola’ is just awesome dumb rock.
Most of all, let’s properly listen to ‘jimmy,’ now, not as the song of a Seeker longing to reunite with his lost Inner Child, but as the callback of a demon summoning. ‘jimmy’ is one of the songs that really saw me through the dog days, and I think it’s better for its singer having been turned inside out. It was always great, but the seer had to lose all his clothes for the malice in his voice to really peal. ‘jimmy’ is about evolving, but evolving into something worse. It’s about the 11-year old victim growing up and sorting himself out so vengeance can ensue. The child waiting, “defending his light;” the child taking his demon by the hand. Chills. If the demon is his own adult version, all the better. Adults are up to no good, and the fact that the adult/demon is so enamored with Eleven only makes the drama richer. Together, they go back to where it all began and where it must surely end.
These nominally deeper cuts are what really endures. And you really can’t afford to take the other stuff to heart anymore, if you ever did. Outgrowing it is where you really step through your Shadow. And if Maynard’s harem story doesn’t gross you out, the fact that he apparently wrote a song for his winery’s bad Yelp reviews should put you off, even if you choose to pay no mind to the dumb shit he says. I think about how his band plateaued with a forlorn epic about his mother dying. Kinda figures.
- Tool want you to take everything with a grain of salt, said the FAQ. ↩︎
- That’s the latter lyric, from ‘Third Eye.’ The former, from ‘Eulogy,’ is generally read as a dig at L. Ron Hubbard which one might say demonstrates enough awareness on the part of Maynard against gurus so as to let him off the hook. ↩︎
- There was a progression, too. The definitive Tool of AEnima (described here) emerged from the pure sweat of Undertow and went galaxy brain on Lateralus. ↩︎
- The “they’re-all-Maharishi” thing is of course a giant can of worms we have been serving ourselves as a culture for quite some time. Coming to mind is Michael Gira of Swans, seemingly also on a quest for catharsis, if a more self-flaggelating one, who is accused of rape. Also, the late Harold Bloom, who was a self-described Gnostic and even penned a sermon for his book on the creed Omens of the Millennium, was at least handsy, at least according to Naomi Klein. Grant Morisson, whose comics suggest we are all Superman underneath our neuroses, still seems an all-around good bloke, though the late great Scott Eric Kaufman did say that we for sure aren’t and All-Star Superman was only good without the Newsarama interview and GM is a walking ball of wrong. Right, that’s enough of a digression and far too wide a cultural fishing net. Look up Acephalous. ↩︎
- I’m editing for brevity, and probably making it look a bit worse than it is. But ‘Forty Six & 2’ is in many ways the definitive Tool banger. Just don’t go into the chromosomes. ↩︎
- What’s up with ‘Intolerance,’ though? It really sounds like it could have been repurposed for the glory of kek back when the alt-right was still a thing. ↩︎
- Even this piece grew out of a rejected LitHub query. Failing at the Jungian-alchemical process of making gold out of butthurt. ↩︎
- If there were no rewards to reap / no loving embrace to see me through / this tedious path I’ve chosen here / I certainly would’ve walked away by now / gonna wait it out ↩︎
the Budafoki amended 