Ralphy's Concert Reviews

Tool - Concert at the Philipshalle in Düsseldorf (Germany) 26-06-2001

Let me start by telling you how I came to know Tool. As can easily be seen on Ralphy's Reviews Page I am a big fan of Creed's album "Human Clay" and therefore I sometimes spend time on the Creednet Bulletin Board (at times I was a bit addicted to it), mostly on the Faith/Religion-forum (I am an atheist and love to discuss the pros and cons of religion ; one of the other members called himself Maynard James Keenan, but I had no idea who that was at that time), but sometimes also on the General Music-forum, where there was a lot of positive mention of a band called Tool. As a result I downloaded the song "Stinkfist" (a song that uses fisting as an analogy for giving yourself completely to the one you love and, my personal observation, the need for always raising your thrill- or kick-level), when I saw it on the net and I liked it, but that was it.

After that I didn't think much about Tool, but when in March of this year I found out that they were going to perform at the Pinkpop-festival, which I have been attending for the last couple of years, I got more curious. So after I had been DJ in my regular hangout 'D'r Aowe Kino' for the so-called Ralphy's Rocknight, my friend Barry H. (also known as Barrysaurus) lend me his and Tool's CD "Ænima" together with the A Perfect Circle CD "Mer des Noms". Although both CD's feature singer Maynard James Keenan I was blown away by "Ænima", while I merely liked "Mer des Noms". The Tool-CD was one of these rare finds you stumble upon occasionally and I now consider it to be one of the best albums that has been made in the last decade, if not ever. After listening to it over and over again I wanted to know more of this band that had escaped my attention for far too long. While surfing around the Creednet BB again it was brought to my attention that the new Tool-album "Lateralus" was about to be released (Barry H. told me he expected it to be something like the ultimate album) and I couldn't wait to hear more from these four musicians, so I picked it up a couple of days after the release. And, although I personally still prefer "Ænima" which became the first CD to be copied in my newly attained CD-Rewriter, it was obvious from the first listen on that Tool had created another masterpiece. So from initially thinking that it would be nice to finally get to know the band Tool, when they play at Pinkpop, they became my primary target for that festival. The story of my first Tool live experience at Pinkpop can be read by clicking on the name Pinkpop (the Tool-part is at the bottom of the page). I also bought another album of theirs, "Undertow", at Pinkpop, so that only their debut studio-album "Opiate" was still missing in my collection, but Barrysaurus made me a copy of that.

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For the few poor people who don't know who Tool is (I was among them myself until recently) I will share a few things that I found out about them. The band was founded by the already mentioned singer Maynard James Keenan, a former professional army man, and guitarist Adam Jones, who's day job at that time was working on the special effects of movies like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Predator 2 and Jurassic Park. A skill that would come in handy later, because he became the brain as well as the sculptor of the original, yet weird price-winning special effects videos by Tool (which never feature the band themselves), that are also a major part of their live shows. What is also interesting background knowledge on Adam Jones is the fact that, before Tool, he was in a band with his old school friend Tom Morello, who later became the man responsible for the great guitar riffs in another formidable band named Rage Against The Machine. Keenan and Jones held several auditions for drummers, but often the drummer wouldn't show and than Keenan's neighbour Danny Carey would fill in, because he felt sorry for the guys and eventually he ended up becoming their regular drummer. Tool would be the better for it, since Carey has become one of the (if not thé) best drummers in the music business today. The original line-up of the band was completed by bassist Paul D'Amour, but he left the band before the 3rd album "Ænima" was released and has been replaced by Englishman Justin Chancellor, who had been opening shows for Tool with his former band Peach.

From the very first moment on after the release of their debut album in 1992 Tool would be a very controversial act, because their lyrics (mainly written by Keenan) were received to be anti-religious and anti-Christian, which created a mighty uproar in conservative America. Tool themselves claim not be anti-religion, they just want people not to follow religious leaders blindly without thinking for themselves like mere sheep. However there are songs in which they attack Christianity head on, at least when I interpret them, others may disagree. Not that it would scare me away from their music. On the contrary as I'm not a fan of the church of Jesus Christ myself it perhaps only makes their music more appealing to me, but I have a Christian mail friend who doesn't want her children exposed to the music of Tool. She has argued with her husband, who likes the beats of Tool, about it more than once (Felycity, if you have any problems with me stating that part of our chat here, let me know and I will remove it). The other fascinating aspect of Tool is their music. I heard that they started out as just another hard rock/metal band on "Opiate" (I only know the song Opiate from this concert ; the title is a reference to Karl Marx's statement "Religion is the opiate for the masses", one of my all-time favourite quotes), but what immediately struck me listening to their music, especially Ænima and Lateralus, was the melodic and symphonic part of their music. Later I discovered that the band was heavily influenced by progressive rockband King Crimson and that their last 2 albums were (co-)produced by David Bottrill, who also worked with King Crimson and another great progressive musician, Peter Gabriel. And although I myself am not familiar with the music of King Crimson (who will be supporting the upcoming US-part of the Tool-tour) I do recognize elements of other progressive rockbands like Marillion, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Saga and Rush in Tool's work. I am a big fan of these bands and progressive rock in general (although I call their style symphonic rock) and as my taste in music has shifted to the heavier bands over the years it only seems natural that I have fallen for the music of Tool, which I have seen being described as progressive metal.

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After Pinkpop I was convinced that I would not see Tool perform live for quite a while, since most of their European tour was sold out and I wasn't really trying to get tickets either, although their last 2 albums would keep on finding their way back into my cd-player. But it would turn out differently. Hearing Tool on the (Dutch) radio isn't a common thing, so when I did on one fine Monday I immediately noticed it. It was on Radio 3FM during the show of Henk Westbroek, a famous (At least in Holland) singer/songwriter/DJ/politician. A day later I heard him again talking about Tool, a band he adored and who he had planned to see live the following Tuesday in Düsseldorf, but a meeting of the town council of Utrecht of which he was a member of, had come up and he wouldn't be able to make it to the show and therefore he would give away the 2 tickets to the first caller who could identify the Tool-song, which he was going to play now and the one he had played yesterday. On Monday I couldn't pay a lot of attention on the song, because my boss was talking to me (I was at work) and I thought they had played the single "Schism", but they were playing "Schism" now on Tuesday, so I thought that this would be to easy. So I dug in my (unconscious) mind trying to remember the Monday-song and I thought it could have been "The Grudge", I phoned in and guess what, I won. I did get the pleasure of giving the right answers on the air (very shortly) and 2 days later I received the tickets. I asked my girlfriend Monja to join me to the show, but she had other plans (she and her dog were training for an important competition and besides she isn't into Tool like I am) and therefore I thought of Barry, who is maybe even a bigger Tool-fan than I am, he had already seen them in Tilburg earlier on this tour. When I asked him to come along he was ecstatic (naturally). It turned out that this day was the first of his school-vacation (yes, he is still a student, trying to become a teacher, poor kids :-) ) and there was no better way to start it.

We hadn't visited the location, the Philipshalle in German Düsseldorf (the concert was first supposed to be in the Stahlwerk, but that proved to be too small a venue), before, so we left at home around 17.15 hours. It was a 90 km drive and pretty easy to find, so we arrived at around 18.15 (the way home took only about 35 minutes, the benefits of the speed limitlessness of the German Autobahns) and had to wait until around 7.00 PM for the doors to open. The Philipshalle turned out to be pretty big (and entirely sponsored by Dutch companies like Philips and Heineken) and at first we thought it wasn't that crowded. We got some pretty good places in front of center stage and we still had a lot of room during the performance of the opening act, the English trio Cortisone, who started just after 8.00 PM. Cortisone's show was pretty loud and I was glad I had brought some ear plugs, which I had gotten at Pinkpop. They played for a little more than half an hour, I think, and had a couple of decent songs in there. Both Barry and me had never actually heard about them (except we knew they were supporting Tool on this tour), but Barry said he was going to check in record stores if he could find their CD. What I furthermore noticed is that obviously Tool always play the same tape before coming out on stage. Barry recognized some weird electronic tunes that they also played in Tilburg and just before Tool would enter the stage (just after 21.00 hours) they played the song "Links 1,2,3" by the German metal-band Rammstein. I had already read several concert reviews on the Toolshed-website (The best source for Tool-information, better than the official site, on the internet), where this song had been mentioned, so I kinda knew it would be coming.

The Dutch Choice All Time Hot 100 (year 2002; version 31) with -links

So now finally to the actual show. They started out, as usual for this tour, with "The Grudge", which is a great opening for the album "Lateralus", but in both live-shows that I now saw, didn't leave that big of an impression on me. After that they continued with their biggest hit so far, "Stinkfist". This led to wild enthusiasm in the now extremely crowded hall and a lot of pushing and shoving of people who wanted to form a pogo-pit just in front of us. Well both Barry and me are big boys, so we could handle that (with an outspreaded elbow here and there), but we didn't want to become part of the actual pit itself, so we moved slightly back. Than came the song that really made my day "Eulogy". It had fastly become my absolute favourite Tool-song (well together with that crazy German recipe "Die Eier von Satan") and because I had seen the setlists of the previous European shows on The Tool Page Front I knew that they didn't normally include it in their performances on this tour (I later found out that they had played it once before, 2 days earlier). In fact Barry and me had talked about it in the car-ride to the concert how cool it would be if they played "Eulogy". So when I heard the intro, which to me is the musical version of someone being hammered to a cross (I think the song is about Jesus, although many have differing opinions about that), I totally freaked out. I immediately removed my ear plugs and became totally ecstatic. The following song was the only one that I couldn't immediately recognize. It was "Prison sex", the song in which Keenan supposedly deals with being abused by his stepfather as a child. Next came the new single "Schism" (a song that at first was being viewed very critically by the fans, but I have to say it has grown on me tremendously) and "Pushit". In the meantime it had become obvious to me that the festival-version of the Tool-show that I had seen on Pinkpop could in no way be compared to this, the actual real thing. On the festivals they just deliver a hard rocking show and in this complete performance you get all the nuances that really make the Tool-sound, in short on Pinkpop it was just (good) metal, but now I recognized the progressive metal-style that I had grown to love about Tool. The following 2 songs were a perfect example for this, they are always left out of the setlist at festivals, first "Disposition" and second "Reflection". And especially the latter was great, the song just starts out with that monotonous drum rhythm by Danny Carey, that carries on throughout the song and slowly (the song is over 11 minutes) the band reaches the musical climax of it. In retrospect the song reminds me a bit of the act of having sex, whereby the final guitar riff of Adam Jones which he kept repeating endlessly, while the other bandmembers had left the stage one by one, is the figurative equal to the afterplay or the cuddling if you like. At this time the band always takes a break in which they show the "Mantra/Schism"-video. Those who don't know this Tool-routine do not react too kindly on this repetition as I also heard criticism on the before mentioned ongoing riff-repetition. Personally I would also prefer to see another video in the (deserved) break, and not a song that they had just played before (maybe it's a better idea to perform the live-version of "Schism" after the video?). Regarding the riff repetition, that was rudely interfered with by slow handclapping of part of the crowd, well, that's for me just part of the details that make the charm of a Tool live performance.

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After the break (with Maynard now dressed only in hot pants) they started out with an especially rocking version of "Sober", which at once took away any objections that the crowd made during the intermission, followed by "Parabola" in this complete show preceded by the introductory piece "Parabol". Secretly I was hoping they would pull out another surprise-song in the form of "The patient", one of my favourites from the new album, but no such luck. Well I got "Eulogy" and a great performance, so I really dare not complain. What did follow was my first acquaintance with "Opiate", a great song and beautifully performed. As usual the band and Keenan did not say a lot in between songs, he did take a moment to thank Cortisone for putting up with them and their strange antics during this (almost finished) European tour. After that they continued with another highlight of the evening, as I later told Barry the whole show was in fact like one long highlight, "Ænema", the song about the sinking into the sea of California. They ended as always with "Lateralus" (this is the correct spelling, the Lateralis on the CD-sleeve was an error according to the band themselves), during which I experienced the thing that Tool-fans refer to as a Toolgasm (a mix of Tool and orgasm). As I stood there listening and enjoying the music I felt a tingling experience that started in my arms and kept going until I felt it in my entire body. I guess this is the feeling that Maynard always refers to and of which he wants you to create something positive. Well I don't know if this review counts as something positive, but it will have to do for now. I myself feel blessed (strange choice of words for an atheist, I guess) to have had this experience and than I am not referring to the Toolgasm, but to be able to see one of the best and tightest bands of this day and age give such an incredible, almost perfect performance. Therefore the only rate I could give to this concert is a 9.5, it'll be hard for any band to top this in the future.

The complete set list (which took a little more than 2 hours):

In between the songs were a lot of sounds and noise-effects like for instance the (-) Ions-thing from the CD Ænima

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