It’s been a while since I wrote on this blog for many reasons. Life sometimes gets too hectic and writing a personal Weblog (remember that’s where the term blog came from – how old am I?) is the last thing you have time to dedicate yourself to.

Last time I did, Game of Thrones was still on the air and I had lots of thoughts about the series at the time. Things have changed for me quite a bit since you last heard from me here but I absolutely had a desire to come back and share my personal thoughts on something that simply won’t fit into a Facebook post or some tweets.

And that’s the new Tool single that released last week. Tool is my all-time favorite band and has been for quite some time. The wait for them to release new music became something of an Internet joke. Tool memes will officially die on August 30 as the long and never-ending wait for a new album will finally close that loop.

Fear Inoculum is the new single and my family and I recently went on a trip up north to Sonoma. My son had told my wife that he’d always dreamed of both camping and going on a Safari so my wife being the planner AND pleaser that she is, went ahead and knocked both those bucket list items off my son’s list with a visit to Safari West where we stayed in a tent overnight and went on a safari with African animals the next day.

The travel allowed ample time for me to listen to Fear Inoculum on repeat for both the flight there and the flight home. Now the flight from Orange County to Sacramento is only 60 minutes and that allowed me to hear the song around a dozen times through earbuds that pulsated and rocked my eardrums.

I’ve missed my favorite band very badly. I have their back catalog to keep me satiated the past 13 years but there’s nothing like the excitement when the band that speaks to your particular soul more than any other releases new music.

Singer Maynard James Keenan, guitarist Adam Jones, bassist Justin Chancellor and drummer Danny Carey are master musicians and something incredibly special happens when the four of them come together. Sure, they all dabble in side projects, but when the four become one as Tool, they blow everything else I’ve ever heard musically out of existence.

Fear Inoculum was a bit controversial as a single when it first hit because for many long-suffering Tool fans, there was an expectation that the band who return to its somewhat heavier-riffed, harder roots. The last album fans got from Tool 10,000 Days was probably one of the least popular and I think it had to do with the somewhat wistful, more relaxed overall vibe of the album. Thumping songs like The Grudge and Stinkfist were absent outside of the first single Vicarious.

I was also ambivalent on my first listen. It was more mellow. It took longer to digest and wasn’t an ear-ripping headbanger like some previous Tool had been. And that was kind of what I’d been hoping for in their return as well. But something happened on the way to Sacramento.

The Fear Inoculum music became almost symphonic to me. The music, 10 minutes and 25 seconds long, had different moods, different feelings sprinkled all throughout the song. And each part of the song is a perfect showcase for what makes Tool the most unique, compelling and talented band that exists on this planet right now. Carey’s drumming is a tribal, beautiful and enthralling. No one knows how to play like he does.

Maynard strikes a perfect balance of melodic grace while remaining haunting in his hopeful urging of us to purge ourselves of all this fear. The lyrics are open to interpretation as they always are with Tool. My personal take is that Maynard and company are trying to free themselves of all the prevailing fear we have these days from the 24-hour news cycle whether that’s fear of others who are different, fear of impending doom from those others. Lyrics ahoy:

“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”

Don’t think it’s a reach to say that’s exactly what he’s getting at.

Adam Jones is an insane guitarist who helps bring the song to its ultimate crescendo. And Justin Chancellor has made Tool the perfect band with his storming bass guitar.

Tool is about taking you on a journey. They’re the old bump sticker that used to read, “Get it, sit down, shut up and hold on.” Because it’s not as simple as one riff repeated over and over. They’ll give you one beautiful riff that has your head bobbing, then bring it down to a whisper or a cool groove and then immediately slam you in the chest with some drums that make you want to go to your local drum store and buy a set and learn how to pound on it properly.

Tool might not have immediately brought back the shredding music that they used to produce in the early 90s. They aren’t radio-friendly but then again, times have changed. People stream music now (hey even Tool themselves have made THEIR ENTIRE CATALOG available via any streaming device). There’s satellite radio without commercials. There’s playlists and selective music choice. Music videos, one of the things that first intrigued me about Tool, aren’t really a thing any more.

As the times have changed, it’s been a lot of change since Tool last released an album. Tool clearly evolved and wound up at Fear Inoculum on that journey. At first, it wasn’t what I wanted for my long-awaited patience but Tool has always been about pleasing only themselves with their artistry. Thankfully, I’m fully on board with this new version of Tool because I wouldn’t have wanted another rehash of Aenima or Lateralus as great as those albums were (Lateralus, in particular, was genius from first track to the last). I’m also older, wiser and don’t mind a progressive rock symphony of perfection.

I want the greatest band we have today to have evolved and become an even better version of themselves. If the rest of the album is anything like Fear Inoculum, you might not see me for days after August 30th when the album is released. And then we will be right back where we started here.