Holistic Album Review: Tool - Fear Inoculum

Tool’s most recent album, Fear Inoculum has been quite the long-awaited album in the Progressive Rock community. I myself had been waiting for it since my high school years, having been a fan of them since I was a little kid after having been given my brothers old Tool CD’s back in the late 90’s. My first impression of the album felt very similar to the first listening of the album Undertow, even with no correlation in meaning, but a similar feel to the music (at least for me). 

There hasn’t been any true meaning given to the new album just yet by the band, but there have been many speculations. With a name like Fear Inoculum, first being Fear and second being Latin for Inoculation or vaccine, it gives me the impression that this album is about suppression of something. Tool as a group themselves have always equated their music to many social troubles and issues, but this one I feel has a more umbrella meaning as far as society goes all together.  

The meaning I have taken from this album is that it is a literal fear vaccine, a small dose of fear to prepare us for what is to come. Maynard James Keenan said something in the Joe Rogan Podcast in general about the album “All the stuff going on in the world, everybody’s divided and freaking out and going down the dopamine rabbit hole of clickbait.” To me, this gives me the impression that he wants his listeners to be more than well prepared to handle the events going on in the world.  

I don’t believe that the album has a true song order, which to me does a disservice to the meaning of the album. To me, I think there would have been a journey through the songs if there was an order, starting at 7empest and ending with Legion Inoculant. Staring with the problem and ending with the gratification of ending the problem. 

Having listened to the album completely, I feel as if I would almost have to reorganize the songs myself in order to get the full picture, feeling lost through the songs as they pass by back and forth through what seems like a story of society.  

The way I would have organized it would be completely different, but to me makes the most sense as the following: 

• 7empest, the winds that start the problem, that bring the sickness of life and society to us. 
• Chocolate Chip Trip, the addiction of something bad for us and the “trip” we get from the small pieces, not realizing how bad they are regardless of size. 
• Mockingbeat, the tune that follows by society, mocking those who ingest the tidbits of life and information. 
• Invincible, the feeling we get when we think we know what is going on and can spout what we think is right, but ultimately the feeling is superficial. 
• Descending, when we realize what we have taken into ourselves is wrong, or that there is so much more than we could possibly know, leading us to feelings of self-doubt. 
• Litanie Contre La Peur, a prayer against fear, to wish we were not as susceptible to what is affecting us in life. 
• Culling Voices, to finally rid ourselves of those who might put false or inaccurate fears in our heads and lives, removing ourselves from being inundated with fake information. 
• Fear Inoculum, vaccinating ourselves with fear as we slowly take in what we can, learning how to not react so violently to the mass of what happens throughout the world. 
• Pneuma, the breath of life we take once we have taken ourselves out of the situation of false information and so called “clickbait” of social media. 
• Legion Inoculant, you and the masses of those who have pulled themselves from the grip of social media and false information, able to look more clearly at the truth and the larger picture, and being thankful for the small doses of fear you received, as you are now prepared for the larger problems at hand.  

Now, as much of a guess work and my own interpretation of the album was in order to create the order I had put the songs in, I feel that the songs have the same meaning overall. Fear Incoculum, or the injection of fear, giving us small doses of what is to come to better prepare ourselves for what larger problems and events that await us in our day to day lives of being human on such a confusing and fearful planet.