(Editor’s note: Tool’s 2024 tour kicks off January 10th in Baltimore, MD. In celebration, we’re rolling out this review of one of the band’s final concerts of 2023. Tool tickets are available here.)
Even before the first song began, the Tool concert in Toronto on November 21st, 2023 was the loudest I had been to.
When a lone kick drum signaled the beginning of the set, the crowd erupted as the band slowly trickled out of the stands, with drummer Danny Carey leading the charge, followed by guitarist Adam Jones and bassist Justin Chancellor. As they began playing “Fear Inoculum,” the title track of their 2019 album, vocalist Maynard James Keenan claimed his platform atop the stage shrouded in darkness, seen only in silhouette with his spikes sticking up through the gloom.
Keenan encouraged the crowd to put away their “tracking devices,” and the band ran through the only Undertow track in the setlist, “Intolerance,” before blowing out the stadium with the fan favorite “Rosetta Stoned” off of 10,000 Days. The rolling guitars echoed through the space, and every kickdrum could be felt in your chest long after it had finished resounding.
While the three instrumentalists had lights on them at all times, with Carey being particularly bright in the center of the stage, Keenan kept himself in the back, at times disappearing entirely in the gloom. Occasionally his mohawk cut through the psychedelic visuals in the background, but he was content to give the limelight to his band mates. The ethereal vocals often emanated from a void at the back of the stage.
