Where does Fear Inoculum fit within Tool’s philosophy and legacy? What inner coherence can we de-code and unravel? (And what’s all this shit about the number 7?)
Fear Inoculum seems to follow an unusual trajectory for a Tool album, moving from clarity and resolution (in Fear Inoculum and Pneuma) towards paranoia and anger (in Culling Voices and 7empest). While Undertow, Aenima and Lateralus were about breaking through, growing beyond, Fear Inoculum appears to offer a regression.
Or perhaps it’s not a regression, but a double-movement, both forwards and backwards. In The Great Turn we find a character – a twisty-double-figure, reminiscent of the Opiate priest (but with an extra pair or arms), pulled in opposite directions, one head inclined upwards towards the light, the other head inclined downwards and broken open. When we get to glimpse into this broken-open head in the video, we see a great swirling storm. We could name these two figures Pneuma-Tool and 7empest-Tool, one ascending (‘Eyes full of wonder’), the other descending (‘Petulant stench and demeanour’). A polar unity, held in a spiral.
Is this what we expected from Tool? A small (or perhaps large) part of every Tool fan has spent the last two decades longing for the band to write Lateralus Part II. Surely, this is where the band’s career should culminate – in the otherworldly transcendence, enlightenment and resolve promised by Lateralus? But instead we arrive at 7empest, not enlightenment but endarkenment. ‘Follow the evidence. Look it dead in the eye. You are darkness.’
Fear Inoculum pulls in two directions, like the character in The Great Turn. We all love ‘Eyes full of wonder’-Tool. But when the torrent comes and we meet 7empest-Tool, we give a knowing nod and a wink. ‘We know your nature’, we say. The ‘dubious state of serenity’ can only be maintained for so long. The cycle spins. The head bursts open.
What about the number 7? Well, in numerology, 7 is significant. There are 7 chakras, the 7th being the Crown chakra (located above the 6th, the ‘Third Eye’.) In Christian and Jewish mysticism, 7 is associated with God and spiritual perfection. This is the number of enlightenment. But 7 also suggest a turning, a cycle completed. 7 days in the week and we return to the beginning. Saturn returns after 4 cycles of 7, after 28 years, to lift you up or drag you down, etc…
With Fear Inoculum, Tool has completed a cycle of 7 records, and Fear Inoculum sees the cycle turn, both bursting through the Crown Chakra into the light, as one half of the character in The Great Turn video, ‘become Pneuma’. But also, regressing to the mud and grit of the beginning – a many-armed character who evokes Opiate, 7empest evoking the sounds of Undertow, particularly Flood. Yes, we are sun becoming. But the waters are still rising around our feet.
The music of Tool has always been about growth, and here we find a mature perspective on the growth process – not as a linear progression into the light, but a cyclical process, where the way forward is the way backwards, where the way up is also the way down, and where we must return to our earliest being, our most primal influences, to move forward. The spiral turns, and all we can hope for is to hold our polarities together, become Pneuma, become 7empest.
And herein lies the genius of Fear Inoculum – it completes the cycle, it encompasses the band’s entire career and holds the polarities in unity. It offers us a glimpse of the beyond, while reminding us that our feet are rooted in the mud. Holy fuck it’s good.
And most importantly – and I’ve taken far too long to arrive at the grand conclusion – it’s packed full of fucking badass tunes.
Spiral out homies.
