If there was one word that could describe the Tool show at the Pepsi Arena Thursday, it would be loud. It was one show that made me sorry that I had forgotten my earplugs. With that having been said, the show was incredible.
The opening act, Fantomas, was extremely loud, even painful at times. Their style of music was interesting, to say the least. It could be described as merely noise. Essentially, along with the standard guitar and drums that accompany any metal show, there was Mike Patton making eccentric noises. These include acting act like a barking band, and in the next breath, yelping like a rat dog. It is unfortunate that he did not sing more, as he has a decent voice. The noises were interesting, and managed to scare many of the attendees several times.
Concertgoer Ben Posner said, "If there was a way to project an abstract painting into music, this would be it." He’s right—if you take Fantomas’ splashes of noise, it would resemble an abstract painting.
Some memorable points in their set were that they played two music themes. They played "Twin Peaks" from their Director’s Cut album, and their version of "Rosemary’s Baby." They were interesting.
Another great part of their set was when Adam of Tool came out to play with them. Probably the best part of their show was when Patton went through and pointed to each band member and they each got to do a free-form solo.
After what seemed like forever, we got to see what we all had paid $35 for: Tool. Needless to say, no one was disappointed. The set lasted for over two hours. It was amazing.
Of their two-hour set, I would have to say that "Eulogy," "Ænima," and "Forty-Six & 2" were the best. This is not to say that everything else was bad. On the contrary, the rest of the show was great. They couldn’t do anything wrong, and they knew it.
Tool managed to merge many of their claymation images from their music videos along with weird images of naked people and lots of animated computer graphics playing on two huge screens in the background and on a smaller screen that Maynard sung in front of for the whole show. These images seemed to move in time with the music creating a whole new experience.
With such a long set, there had to be an intermission, during which the contortionists that were featured in the "Schism" video performed. Just before the intermission they began contorting themselves onstage while the band played. They definitely turned a lot of heads with some of the positions that they were able to get into. During the intermission they performed while being suspended in the air by their feet. They were able to dance in the air, all the while being suspended in front of the projection screens. It truly was amazing to see what these people were able to do. It was also amazing that they were able keep up their routine so long, especially since they were upside down.
Overall, the show was a great time for all that attended. There was no real moshing, and everyone enjoyed a fantastic performance. I only wish that they had played "Ticks and Leeches" or "Sober." Oh well. I still enjoyed myself, and want to see them again, for the third time now.
