For years, I have balked at further exploring Tool’s discography.

When I was getting into harder music as a teenager, I never heard of Tool.  By the time I was aware of them in college and grad school, Tool’s progressive metal ran counter to my interest in the British alternative scene of the 90s.  My biggest problem with listening to Tool is since their discography spans back almost three decades with nearly equal success for each of their albums, I don’t know where to start: Their debut studio works Opiate EP and Undertow from 1992 and 1993, featuring their first hits “Opiate” and “Sober,” their 2001 magnum opus Lateralus, or their most recent album, released after over a decade of exile.  

But after hearing this song, the second single from their comeback album, and the best mainstream rock song of the year, one thing is certain.  I will need to take a further look into this band’s discography.

“Pneuma” – Tool

Mainstream
#15 peak, #48 year-end

My Summer Vacation
By Crispin Rivers Cuomo Fubert Jr.
Mrs. Cester’s 12^th Grade English Class

I believe that music comes and goes in cycles, and some of us are lucky enough to ride the crests.  The men in my family are perfect examples of this.  Initially, I thought perfect music appeared every 16 years, which is also the number of years between Fubert generations.  Right now I have a 1 year old son with my girlfriend and he is the best.

“Crispin, you’ve never had a girlfriend or even been kissed!”

Shut up.

My Dad was born in 1987.  In that year, landmark albums were released, including Appetite For Destruction, Tunnel Of Love, The Joshua Tree, Hysteria…

(record scratch)

OK, we’re not going the Pitchfork route with these guys again.  Though the hilarious thing to consider is that had the Fubert family’s perfect music paragon from the review continued, it would have led us from 1971 to 1987 to 2003 to 2019 – the year Tool came back with Fear Inoculum, their first album since 2006.

Tool are no strangers to releasing epic albums and songs, with three of their four previous studio albums before Fear Inoculum dragging for over 70 minutes apiece, with numerous songs on all their previous albums running for over 10 minutes.  With the CD essentially dead by the time they finally decided to release another album, the four members of Tool collectively said “screw it,” and as a result Fear Inoculum is 86 minutes long (longer than the length of a single compact disc), which will allow Mr. Fubert from Pitchfork to mockingly declare it the new best Tool record over Lateralus.  But they’ve never had a hit song as long as “Pneuma,” which goes on for a mind-melting 11:53 – the longest hit song of the year on either the Alternative or Mainstream Rock charts.  Initially when I saw the track length in preparation for the Mainstream Rock side of my listening, I have to admit I groaned a little.  But then it came on, and within seconds my fear of the long running time dissipated.  As cliché as it is, “Pneuma” is an odyssey, a song that has to be judged based on how it progresses over its 12 minute length and not because of its verses and choruses.

The tone of the song is set in the first minute by Adam Jones’s four chord riff, which never changes for the first 50 seconds.  It’s ominous and brooding, and prepares us for the experience we’re in for when the basic song begins.  Then just when you get tired of it, Jones varies his guitar playing and Danny Carey comes in with a Middle Eastern-styled percussion pattern that becomes a recurring motif throughout the song.  Then Justin Chancellor comes in with the song’s main riff on bass.  I can see Tool diehards getting upset over this riff as it sounds a bit similar and less complex than his bass riff on “Schism,” Tool’s biggest hit, but its pounding rhythm continues the ominous feel that began with the guitar riff in the intro, and naturally throws us into the verse, where Maynard James Keenan begins to tell us how we are transforming into the titular Pneuma “with one breath, with one word.”  As pneuma is a word describing the soul of a spirit or God, the song “Pneuma” presents us its real meaning with the music.  It slowly builds in intensity, and then builds some more, until we hit Adam Jones’s vicious and percussive main riff in the chorus.  By this point, we’re feeling the wrath of God.

Tool have been in this industry for a long time, not just as Tool but as parts of other bands (including A Perfect Circle and Puscifer for Maynard James Keenan), and they demonstrate on “Pneuma” that their abilities as musicians and songwriters didn’t rust over the 13 year break.  When going through the song, you’ll notice subtle differences between the verses and choruses.  This is not just demonstrated in Adam Jones’s brief tangent from his intro riff at the beginning of the song, but also in the pre-chorus to the second chorus.  While it’s the same in terms of notes being played, Danny Carey comes in with another Middle Eastern tabla pattern that emphasizes the song’s mystical feel in a way the words can’t.

That brings me to another point I need to make.  Danny Carey kills it on this track.  His drumming in the second chorus is just so intense and visceral that you’re afraid his arms are going to fall off at some point.  Then in the song’s lengthy bridge (a key reason why this song is so long), Carey starts off with a gentle tabla pattern for the quieter moments.  But as the song builds momentum, notice the drumming.  It’s the same pattern, but it gets slightly louder.  And slightly louder.  Then at the song’s nine minute mark, three minutes into the bridge, Carey just begins pounding those drums – so hard, it seems, that you get the feeling he’s about to destroy the heads to his drum kit.  It’s just so powerful, how he turned a mythical tabla pattern into the type of vicious drum fill you play during the big finish at the end of a rock show.

And then at the end of the bridge, Jones comes in with a violent, scathing recitation of the song’s main bass riff from the beginning.  In a song that has slowly been building tension for the nine and a half minutes preceding it, Jones’s guitar riff is the explosion – the climax of all that build since the song began.  At the conclusion of the song after the final chorus, Jones caps it off with a guitar solo, the first and only solo in the song.  It’s far from his most complex solo – this is a band that is known for using mathematical techniques to write music and lyrics, after all – but it’s the perfect way to cap off this 12 minute epic before it dies out, in the distance.

“Pneuma” is an epic in every sense of the word.  Its lyrics demonstrate fear at a power greater than oneself, its drumming transforms from mystical playing to an absolute shredfest, and the guitar and bass are as powerful and transcendant as ever.  It is a song that deserves its title, in my book, as the best of the 50 songs that made the Mainstream Rock year-end list.  No negative Pitchfork review required.

SOURCES

DiCrescenzo, Brent.  “Tool: Lateralus.”  Pitchfork 15 May 2001.  Web.  21 January 2021.

“Pneuma.”  Dictionary.com 2021.  Web.  23 January 2021.

IMAGE SOURCES

Fear Inoculum album cover from WikiMedia

Photo of Tool from Rolling Stone

Photo of Danny Carey from Paiste Cymbals