Why Tool Could Be More Relevant Today Than Ever Before

A heavy-metal giant is awakening from a 13-year slumber, but does the domain it once ruled remain? From the early ’90s to 2006, the foursome of Tool stood as a rock-and-roll epitome when rock and roll was a social average. As grunge issued a culture-wide call to bond over psychic wounds by comparing calluses, Tool responded with gnarlier body-and-soul horror than many were prepared for. By the time the band’s frightening bass lines and abject-trauma themes had been sucked into a popular nu-metal movement lacking mystery and brains, 2001’s Lateralus fell from the sky like a 1,000-page New Testament, or at least like a textbook dusted with DMT.

But today, even the wave of car-commercial guitar pop that was cresting around the time of the band’s 2006 motley, , has crashed and dissipated. Rock still matters,—between rap and everything else—that represents American pop today. If Tool was a best-selling alternative to a mainstream branded as alternative, that’s not a paradigm that computes anymore. Nor has there been an easy way for it to be rediscovered and redissected since its absence. The band kept its music off streaming and download platforms. Even many of the onetime diehards (ahem) let their devotion lapse when their CDs scratched and their iPods fritzed.