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familiarvulpes · 5 years

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Tool - Fear Inoculum Album Review

It feels good to review albums again. I reviewed albums last year for about six months but it just became too much trying to juggle everything with personal life and day job and writing songs for the channel and creating stuff for the second channel. But now instead of doing video reviews, I can do blog reviews. To be honest I don’t know why I did not think of this sooner. Album reviews will be about once a month. If I am feeling giddy then maybe two. Another good thing with doing reviews through this blog is I can spend more time on each album talk about it more and give more thought to each review. Like before with the reviews that were on the YouTube channel. Each album will get a score between one and ten. The higher the score, the more I enjoyed the album. It is just a number on how much I enjoyed it. It is just an opinion. One thing I am going to add is that in these reviews here on the blog, I will go track by track and talk about each one specifically.

The first album I am going to review or talk about is the brand new album from Tool “Fear Inoculum.” The first time I heard Tool is a toss up because I can't really remember. It was either on the video game Guitar Hero World Tour. It had three songs from them. “Vicarious” “Parabola” and “Schism.” The other time that it could have been the first time I heard Tool is when in high school I was in the car with my band mates and he played Tool. I believe it was Sober. Either one of those two were the first time but ever since then, I have been obsessed with them. They are the reason I make the music I do. I never knew you could make with dark spin and a hint of ambiance. Unfortunately, by the time I discovered them it was after “10,000 Days.” If you are a Tool fan then you know that is a horrible time to become a fan because it would be 13 years before any new music would come out. I am not going to talk about each time there was a rumor on the internet buring the span or the lawsuits had to deal with during that time. All I want to talk about is the new album.

The first time I listened to the album in full, I was in complete silence and in awe. You can say I was fangirling, I don't care. I love this album. The fillers I am not the biggest fan of but the songs themselves are amazing. You know you are doing something right when you right a ten minute song and it goes to number one on the billboard top 100. My personal favorite on the album is “Culling Voices.” It is the calmer one of the main songs and the lead vocals just make the song. Maynard James Keenan and his haunting voice makes this album very special. I love the album. The wait is worth it. I know people complain about it. I knew once it came out that people would have a problem with it. When you wait 13 years to release an album, there will always be people who expect way too much. I knew that when this would come out that people would feel underwhelmed. This album has become almost a deity with all its rumors and hearsay. Number one rule in life. Don’t try to make other people happy. You can’t make everyone happy. That doesn’t mean be rude to everyone but do things that benefit you. Now onto the songs.

Fear Inoculum

The First song on the album, and the single, opens up with your classic Tool ambiance. From faded in and out guitars that pan left to right , which is a good touch, to the drums and synths from the incredibly talented Danny Carey. After a while the bass comes in. What brought me to love Tool is the bass riffs. They play bass like a guitar which gives them part of their sound I believe. If you would ask me what is the heart of Tool music, I would say the bass. I know not a lot of people would agree with me but I can not think of another rock band has the bass guitar be so unique. Most of the time the bassist is just playing the root notes of what the guitarist is playing. But with Tool, the bass gives something more to the songs. Then Maynard James Keenan comes with the vocals. His vocals on not just this one but all of the songs sound amazing. The vocals are crisp and clear and just the overall tone of his voice is beautiful. The word inoculum I had to look up and it turns out Maynard talked about ‘inoculating’ in an interview about his wine making business. This interview was like three four years ago. The title was right in front of us for so long and yet we were looking for some weird spiritual things. No, its a wine making things, at least I think. I am not the greatest at grammer. Worst subject in school. At one point Mayrd does this whisper type of vocals and goes right into singing. The melody during the ‘chorus’, I was not expecting. Do not get me wrong, it was a pleasant surprise. Then after a whole the bridge hits and it is classic Tool. Almost dissonant guitars with punchy bass riffs. It calms down with the whole band with Maynard doing a very eerie vocal performance. The next vocal part is chant like. This song just goes into one thing after another. The transitions between are performed smoothly and precise which I expect no less from these guys. Then at the end of the songs everything picks up and gets heavier. At times it sounds like there are two drummers but in fact just one drums with 42 arms. I don’t know how the guy does it. You also have a guitar solo that sounds similar to something you would hear on 10,000 days. Then the very end is just guitars and crazy drums. I love this song. I think it is the perfect single for the album because it is the ‘catchiest’ on the whole thing.

Pheuma

The second song on the album is called “Pneuma.” This might be the most “Toolest” title ever because the word pneuma means the spirit or soul of a person. The song starts with a guitar riff that is kind of hard to explain. It is unique but hard to explain. Then the drums come and play some complicated groove that I am not going to even try to count because I am bad at math. Then it fades out to a bass riff that is in an odd time signature with a delay effect so the whole thing so far is in classic Tool fashion with being in an odd time signature. The guitar joins the bass in the same groove with a delay affect so it gives it a more spacey vibe to the riff. Then the Maynard comes in and the song officially starts. This song also has some chanting like parts from Maynard which is a theme in the album so far. I can only imagine what it is like live. After the chanting it goes into open chords and drums fills and just a huge sound. The quality on this record just surprises me every time how clear and crisp it is. The song continues a little while instrumentally and then goes back in the chanting like vocals with a little bit different guitar. This song is much more trippy and spacey than “Fear Inoculum.” It continues the pattern so far for quite a while. For some, I could see that being a turn off but I enjoy mainly because I love the sound to begin with but I can see why people would say that the record is too repetitive. I think it is meant to be repetitive because I have always seen Tool as a band that make music for meditation and it is hard to meditate to a three minute song. After several rounds of the same thing it breaks to just bass and what I think are bongos but I could be wrong. Then Synths come into the mix. That is another thing I believe they added more of than the previous releases is synths. I have noticed that synths are making a comeback, especially analog or modular. They’re just fun toys and super easy to make trippy music with. The song has a solo that sounds like a Tool solo. That is one thing about the solo’s is that once you hear you can instantly know who plays it. After the solo, it goes into a super heavy riff that is one of my favorites in the album. It is almost like a breakdown. The guitar tones rip through the mix in the best way possible and then song goes back into the chanting like vocals with the whole band just going crazy. The whole song explodes at the end. This song is becoming the fans favorite one I can see why because it has all the classic Tool characteristics but more. The song slowly fades out with instruments. My favorite thing of the song is the bass and delay effects. I am a huge nerd for delay effects and reverb so anytime I hear stuff like this I just love it.

Litanie contre la Peur

This is the first filler song for the digital album. Funny story about this song. First off you have to know what it sounds like. It is this super creepy synth that fades in slowly. The sound is very disheartening and creepy. One night at 4 in the morning, myc at apparently got on my computer keyboard and hit the play button and this song is the song that played. I was so freaked out. I thought the raptured happened or aliens invaded or a ghost with a broken flute was haunting me but it was just my silly cat. The song is ok. Like I said before, I am not the biggest fan of the fillers. I just am not sure why they put them in. If it was to make the album more than ten songs then ok maybe I understand. It is just ok this one. But lesson learned. Don’t have your cat walk on your computer keyboard.

Invincible

This is one is to me the best song lyrical on the album. It starts with a sweet guitar riff. It goes on for a bit but there are some changes in the riff so it is not the same thing over and over. Then the bongo whatever things come in and then Maynard starts singing. Like I said before, the lyrics on this one are amazing to me. From what I got from it is a person struggling to stay relevant, which is kind of the theme on the whole record but this song really hits the nail on the head on that theme. Then after a while a break happens with another Tool bass riff with a delay affect on it and goes back into Maynard singing. Just like before but without guitar and a more of a focus on the bass. After a little bit, the guitar comes back and whole the whole bands plays this trippy whatever you call it. One thing about this song is the chugging is real in this one and yet still has parts of ambiance in it. Like the ones before, the transitions are smooth and clean. For about the first half of the song they kind of repeat the riffs and parts but add little differences to them. Pretty much you are going to hear something different every time you listen to it. Around the six minute mark there is the first breakdown. Again the tones are monster. The breakdown does not last long but later in the song, they make sure to properly do a breakdown. It is kind of weird to talk about and the usage of breakdowns but they do great at them I think. Around the seven minute mark, it cuts to what is almost a different song or a different tempo. Super trippy and psychedelic. Then goes into a very tribal chugging part. It sounds like something you would hear from a tribe like thousands of years ago that is about to go to war or sacrifice some goat or fish or something. Maynard adds some vocals in this part with some effects on his vocals. I am not sure what the effect is though. The tribal chugging continues for a bit then breaks into super heavy chugging even though it's the same riff. It is just really heavy. Only complaint about this super heavy thing is that it does go for a long time. I would’ve liked to hear some ambient stuff or something different as the breakdown went along. Then all of the sudden when you think the song is over the whole band comes back in with a killer riff and picks up the tempo a little bit. The end of the song, the whole band just jams out and does what Tool does best. I love this song especially the lyrics on it.

Legion Inoculant

This is the second filler. More ambient-synth stuff. It is border-line noise music. You hear some vocals from Maynard from songs on this album. This is my favorite filler on the album because I do love noise/drone music.

Descending

This one the band has been playing bits and pieces of for a couples before the release of the album. It starts off with ambient noise and then comes in a bass riff with what sounds like a phaser or chorus effect. This riff is the riff they played at shows before the release of the album. Not long after the riff starts Maynard starts to sing. The songs start off very calm and hypnotic like but you can already tell it is in an odd time signatures. This song is more ambient than the others and somewhat chiller than the others. I am not saying that is a bad thing at all. Sometimes you gotta chill and relax and not listen to constant tribal chugging. Around the five minute mark, things pick up and up, not much and then the guitar and bass ring out to start with chugging on the guitar and the bass riff that was in the beginning of the song. This song so far is just one big build up. The part in the song where Maynard sings loudly “Stay Alive” is just so haunting. Around right before the seven minute mark the band goes into a massive jam session with Danny Carey just destroying the toms and the bass and guitar sounding massive. Adam Jones goes into a solo that just Tool. One thing I did not expect was the harmonizing on the guitar during the solo which I thought was a very nice touch. Then the ambiance comes back with the guitars fading in and out and the same bass riff that was in the beginning of the song. The jamming comes back in the while the band and you almost forget you’re listening to a song because it puts you into a trance, at least it did to me. Then another solo comes in and Danny Carey is just destroying the drums. This song just has so much in it. I think over half the song is instrumental and if you know me, I love that. The song just ends with the band going crazy. There is not much more to say about it that that.

Culling Voices

This song is hands down my favorite. It starts off with some sweet ambient noise and goes into a beautiful guitar riff. Maynard comes shortly after. What I like about this song is the vocals and melodies. That are so haunting and hit so hard. The song itself so almost creepy it is so haunting and I love it. This is actually, when it comes to songs, is the shortest at ten minutes and five seconds. Says a lot about the album when the shortest actually song is over ten minutes. My favorite part of the song is when Maynard sings “Don’t you dare point that at me.” I don’t know why I love it but I do. Maybe it is the style of singing he is doing or maybe it hits with me personally. I don’t know. I just love it. The guitars for most of the beginning of the song remind of a post rock band. It could easily be mistaken for a post rock band like God is an Astronaut or Russian Circles if you added more reverb to it. After a while the bass comes in with its own riff and of course sounds amazing. Around the six minute mark, you can tell the song is slowly starting to pick up. As Maynard sings “Don’t You Dare Point That At Me,” The song grows and explodes with full band just going crazy. Even Maynard after a while pretty much screams it in like a whisper cream. The song has a little break near the end but of course picks back up with another jam. This album is full of jams. Every now and then on the internet you will see a person ask for an instrumental album from Tool. There are plenty of instrumental parts on this album that will suffice their fancy. This song is great, I love it. It is my favorite it and I don’t feel like it is talked about enough.

Chocolate Chip Trip

This is my least favorite thing on the album. The synths I do not care but this is just a drum solo. I Know Danny carey is a monster of a drummer but the synths on this just ruin it for me.

7empest

The Longest song on the album. Clocking in at almost sixteen minutes. It starts with a guitar intro that similar to ones throughout the album but then goes into a riff that sounds like it could be on a Tool album in the 90’s. Reminds me of chevelle almost. They said in interviews I believe that they had this riff for years and now are able to put it into a song. The song sounds like it could be on undertow. Even the vocals and melodies sound like undertow. Out of all the albums, Undertow is my least favorite but has one of my favorite songs on it. That album to me feels like they were beginning to find their sound. Around the two minutes and forty second mark, they do a quick chugg thing then go right back into the song. Maynard’s vocals are angriest on this one when compared to the whole album. Of course it is in an odd time signature. I am not going to try to figure it out. The more you listen to the song, the more you hear other albums on it. It is ike every album into one song. The band even goes hard on this song. They let everything loose and just go insane. There are guitar solos, sweet bass riffs and insane drums throughout the whole song. The guitar solo goes for quite a while. And more impressive is that it is in an odd time signature as well which of course makes sense. At times I wish there was more singing but I am totally OK with these exteneded instrumental parts. It is hard to digest the whole song in go since it is over fifteen minutes long. Around the half way point of the song, they do this really fast guitar chugging which at first listen took me by surprise because it is just so cool. They have done riffs like that before when it is chugging pull offs but not the fast before. This song is really something else. It is a behemoth of a song because there is so much in it. I could only imagine the writing process for it. No wonder it took so many years to write the album. Around the ten minute and forty second mark they do a nasty breakdown that you can’t but help bob your head to and right after that, goes right back into a solo. Once the solo ends, you hear the guitar riff you heard at the very start of the song. It picks back up and the band goes crazy again. This song is a rollercoaster. At the end you heard that nasty breakdown with vocals for a short period and everything fades out at the end.

Mockingbeat

This is the last song on the digital version and probably the weirdest filler thing on the album. I am not sure what it is. I don’t really understand. But they put it on the album for a reason and there is probably some hidden meaning behind it but we will probably never know. Or maybe we are looking to much into it. Oh well.

Final Thoughts

The albums is a 9/10 For me. At times, I wish there was more singing and yes at times it does repeat a lot but that does not take away from the masterpiece that is this album. And now time to wait 54 years for the next Tool album.

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Flying Lotus Made a Feature Film and It's F*cking Disgusting

Steve Ellison, the artist primarily known as Flying Lotus, wants to "show people the ugly," so the Grammy-nominated producer made a film. His directorial debut, under the name mononym,"Steve," comes with Kuso, a new body horror comedy that follows the lives of disfigured men, women, and children living in Los Angeles after a catastrophic earthquake. Projected through a network of discarded televisions, Kuso bounces from screen to screen in a series of interwoven vignettes that depict intimate character profiles set in a post-apocalyptic universe.

The film has made a lot of noise since massive walkouts during its first screening at Sundance back in January prompted critics to call it both "grotesque" and straight-up "disgusting." The Verge went as far to label it "the grossest movie ever made." Within the film's 95-minute runtime, among other things, an erect penis is stabbed with a giant steel rod, a man gives birth to a cockroach anally, and a talking neck boil performs oral sex.

Beyond the profusion of bodily fluids, the costume and set design seen throughout the live action sequences are perhaps the most eye-grabbing components of the film. Kuso combines eerie animation, comedy, bizarro special effects, dynamic prosthetic work, with, expectedly, a kickass score featuring contributions from Kamasi Washington, Aphex Twin, and Akira Yamaoka. The film is also riddled with brilliant cameos from Hannibal Buress, Tim Heidecker, Anders Holm, and George Clinton. Creators recently spoke with Steve over the phone to talk about his hands-on approach to filmmaking and some of the things he learned during this two-year making of Kuso.

Creators: The physical layout of each scene, from the furniture to the props, creates a thoroughly complete image that's hard not to appreciate. How did you and the other writers work with the art department to bring this vision to the big screen?

Flying Lotus: I was so in the trenches with this film. I got to get real specific about the details. Like, the early Tim Burton movies are so him, and I knew I was gonna do that with this movie; I knew this was gonna be the one I got super dirty with. This is the movie where you see things from my sketchbook come to life. I really wanted it to be that kind of project. I really wanted to dig deep for it, but I also had really talented designers around so it was a combination of both. I had this vision of this taking place in kind of like a pre-internet world, a world where the technology hadn't really blown up yet. I wanted to show that mid-90s kind of vibe. Everything kind of stems from that place—it was a lot of fun, though. I love doing all the little details, designing the characters outfits, designing some of the prosthetic stuff, and the monsters.

What was your introduction to animation and video like?

I was just messing around in Photoshop, learning how to make things look weird and funky. And then I just kept doing it. I would have my friends send me pictures and stuff and then I would just do up their faces all crazy, just for fun. It was something else to do other than just draw in my sketchbook. And then it just kept evolving into this thing.

I imagine making electronic music and editing sound translates pretty well to using programs like Photoshop and After Effects. Was that your experience?

Absolutely. That's why it didn't feel completely unnatural to go in that direction. It just felt so similar, it just felt like now I'm editing visual, photoshop layers instead of audio. But I mean they are also so different. I think early on, when I was just fucking around with PS and AE, I saw how much the stuff I made was bothering my friends. They would be like, "Ugh, oh my god, what is that?" And I was like, "Well, something about this is doing something for them right now."

Was it your intention to make a film that would elicit that sort of reaction?

I didn't set out to make this vile film that people couldn't even sit through. More so, I wanted to show people the ugly. I wanted to show people some ugly at a time when everyone is trying to look pretty and everybody wants their face on everything. I wanted to show you your ugly ass in all its glory.

I saw that Eddie Alcazar is one of the producers on the film. Does Kuso feel like a sort of natural progression from the short you made with him last year?

It was all a perfect storm that led up to this. But yeah I think the last pieces of the puzzle came when I worked with Eddie Alcazar on FUCKKKYOUUU. To me, that film was hugely influential in my wanting to make a movie and mustering up the courage to actually do it. He and I became really good friends after that project, and while we were working on it, we pretty much came up with it together. He had the idea, I had the music. But it didn't happen until we met and were in a room together. We just kept exchanging ideas and it became what you saw. And I felt so close to that. I felt like, "Man I can do this. I'm ready. And you know what? Eddie can help me. If he says we can do it, and he knows some people, lets just do it. Fuck it." Then I got some money and so we were like, "Let's make this shit." And then Royal [a short film by Steve] happened, and the rest is history. When we first had the idea, I was already working on some animation stuff, and I had some time off of music, too, so I didn't have to focus too much on that. I had the time I could just carve out for doing something new. So it was sort of like a perfect storm.

A lot of the editing and sound design featured in Kuso reminds me of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and other Adult Swim classics. Did these programs influence your work at all?

Absolutely. I think Tim and Eric and Adult Swim were hugely influential. You know it's funny, I started showing Tim clips of the movie and he'd be like, "Wow! We never pushed this far in the show." And I was like, "Yes! I got you, motherfucker." And it was super fun. Tim was a such good sport about everything. He was so awesome. I would tell him, "Man, I'm like your child. This is the result of your efforts, too." But also, and a lot of people don't know this, but people like Dave Willis from Aqua Teen Hunger Force helped write some of this with me. I mean, Aqua Teen Hunger Force was hugely influential in the film, too. The scene with the aliens and the girl on the couch and shit. That's Aqua Teen right there. So it's got a lot of Adult Swim-ness in there definitely. We also worked with the editor from The Eric Andre Show, Luke Lynch, so he helped me out a lot, too. There's a lot of different influences in there.

You've also talked about the influence of Japanese cinema in your work, specifically horror films. How did that genre play a role in Kuso's aesthetic?

I think more than anything, what I got from Japan was their openness to the ideas; the abstractions, I love that. I also think I picked up the way I like to use the camera, and the way I like to direct scenes. I feel like I learned a lot of that stuff from watching Japanese films, period. Whether it be like [Akira] Kurosawa or Takashi Miike. Those guys are on two different sides of the spectrum, but I always followed how they put scenes together. You know, like, Seven Samurai, I love that movie. I think a lot of that influenced my decision-making with the cameras and stuff. There's one film specifically that I think is the closest thing to Kuso: Funky Forest. I feel like if anybody likes Kuso, if you're a fan of the movie, you should go check that out. It's a really cool film.

In the past, you've talked about using film as a platform to address some of your fears and anxieties, as opposed to railing about them on Twitter. How does filmmaking provide a unique outlet in terms of your self expression?

I think with films you get different interpretations of an idea, and you get a lot more room to play with different perspectives and different voices that can agree or disagree with one another. With Twitter, I just try to keep my mouth shut. Motherfuckers will try and make a headline out of anything, so I have to be careful with that. But with films, I can explore a lot of different things. And I've found that by working on this film and finding my way through this process, I've kind of figured out my place in the universe in a way. I feel like, "Oh, ok. I have to be this guy now. This is my opening. There's nobody in this lane so I'm gonna be this guy right now because there's something missing and I can fill it."

Is the film intentionally ambiguous?

I didn't want everything to be spelled out, but I did leave all the piece there for people. If anyone cares enough to watch it again, you might see something you didn't notice the first time that will make it all make sense for you. I definitely left all the pieces there, or at least I tried to without spelling out.

Are you surprised by the reception thus far?

Completely surprised. The fact that it even went to Sundance, I mean, that's every up-and-coming filmmaker's dream. Regardless of whatever happens, to me that was super fun. At the end of the day, whether or not it was a positive thing, no other movie got talked about as much as the 'grossest movie of all time' or whatever they want to call it. So I was really proud of it just existing in the landscape. It's so hard to even make a movie and just the fact that it can exist and be seen is huge to me. You know I'm new to this shit, so it feels like a miracle that we've gotten this far.

Kuso is set to release July 21st in select theaters throughout Los Angeles and online via AMC's Shudder streaming service. Learn more about the film, here.

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