The title track of TOOL‘s long-awaited fifth studio album, Fear Inoculum, can be streamed below. The disc, which will arrive on August 30 via RCA Records, will follow up 2006’s 10,000 Days. Yes, it’s been a painfully long wait for the TOOL fans out there, and they have always operated the same way: teasing their fans with barely nothing and building an excruciating tension among them all prior to any album release.
The 10 minutes-long title cut is a slow-burner, somewhat cathartic and psychedelic tinged song, very much a familiar blend between the Lateralus and 10,000 days tracks. The percussion and bass-lines are hypnotic, and its pace is slow and painful, empowered by the Middle-Eastern drum filigranes of Carey and delicate harmonies building a crescendo, without revealing much at all. At the end it somehow leaves me with a little uncomfortable taste of not getting everything I was hoping for, and that is probably their exact intentions. As we must wait to hear the whole album to really be able to form a definitive opinion, one thing is for sure: this track sounds 100% as TOOL, which is probably what their millions of followers are expecting and salivating about.
Continuing its affinity for pushing the boundaries of physical packaging, the Grammy Award-winning outfit has created a deluxe, limited-edition CD version of Fear Inoculum. The collectible offering, which was conceived by and directed by Adam Jones, features a four-inch HD rechargeable screen with exclusive video footage, charging cable, two-watt speaker, a 36-page booklet and a digital download card. Pre-orders for both the special package and digital downloads are available now. A vinyl release will be announced soon.
“Fear Inoculum” Album Track
The 85-minute collection was produced by TOOL, with Joe Barresi engineering and mixing the release. Barresi also worked with the band on 10,000 Day. The song stream and pre-order news arrives as the Los Angeles band recently made several of their previous releases, Opiate, Undertow, Ænima, Lateralus and 10,000 Days, available for the first time on digital service providers. The releases racked up over 20 million streams in the first 48 hours of release, as well as quickly claiming five spots on iTunes‘s Top 10 Albums chart.
TOOL formed in 1990, releasing four multi-platinum studio albums: Undertow (1993), Ænima (1996), Lateralus (2001) and 10,000 Days (2006); two EPs: 72826 (1991) and Opiate (1992) and the limited-edition boxset Salival (2000). The band has won three GRAMMY Awards®: Best Metal Performance (1998, “Ænima”), Best Metal Performance (2002, “Schism”) and Best Recording Package (2007, 10,000 Days). TOOL is Danny Carey (drums), Justin Chancellor (bass), Adam Jones (guitar) and Maynard James Keenan (vocals)
What do you think of this first taste of Fear Inoculum? Let us know in the comments below.
