First impressions from this morning:
Honestly, the album is decent. Not great, not terrible. Just decent. There are some really great moments here and there, but imo a lot of the longer songs overstay their welcome. Musically, there's not enough variety in it to really distinguish the songs from each other or their earlier work. Something I frequently thought throughout listening to the album that "this sounds a bit like Reflection/The Grudge/Vicarious/whatever". There's nothing in here that's particularly unpleasant, but it's just too much of the same thing at times, even by Tool's standards. The songs often blend into each other, and many of the songs just don't really stand out all that much. I can't recall a second of Culling Voices or Invincible.
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the songs go on for far too long as well. This is one of the prime examples (alongside Black Clouds & Silver Linings) of egregious padding in prog music. A lot of the songs feel stretched out to 10+ minutes rather than organically at that length. There's a lot of great 6-8 minute songs in here. Pneuma would be one of their best songs if it didn't just drag through the instrumental section. There's a lot of great ideas in there, but imo it's cluttered and long so nothing gets to stand out, which is a problem that persists throughout the album.
There is a second, related, problem with this album: it doesn't work as well as an album. There's a sense of flow and somewhat overarching structure of mood in their earlier works that isn't found on Fear Inoculum. Everything sounds too similar and fills a similar function on the album. In an album full of lengthy epics, are any of them really that epic? On their own, the songs will likely stand better than the album does. As it stands, most of the album is a lengthy blur and there is (again) not enough variety to make the album a cohesive, enjoyable, and memorable experience.
I will say, however, that the one stand out throughout this whole album was Danny Carey. I'm not a huge drum guy by any stretch of the imagination, but his fantastic drum and percussion parts are what carries the albums at times. He's on the top of his game, even if the rest of the music sounds like 80min of Typical Tool (TM). MJK is also a fantastic presence on the album and his newer vocal style is welcome if you ask me, even if the lyrics are a little pretentious (even by Tool standards). On that note, I STILL hate most of the song titles for being pretentious even after having context for them.
Finally, I'm just going to say that the transition tracks don't really add anything and they're mostly completely uninteresting. This also includes Chocolate Chip Trip, which definitely exists. They break up the monotony of 10min Tool song after 10min Tool song somewhat, but they don't go far enough in doing so. They also make up half the songs on the album, which is a problem since they're mostly filler.
Currently on my second listen, so we'll see if anything changes in my opinion. So far it's a hard 6/10, maybe a 7/10 if it ages well. It has some great moments, but it's overall too padded and too long to be really great.
Topic: TOOL Official Thread. (Read 112831 times)
