Fear Inoculum
| Tool
Fear Inoculum
Fear Inoculum is the fifth studio album by American rock band Tool. It was released on August 30, 2019, through Tool Dissectional, Volcano Entertainment, and RCA Records. It is the band's first album in thirteen years, due to creative, personal, and legal issues band members encountered since the release of 10,000 Days. The album was released to critical acclaim, with reviewers agreeing that the band had successfully refined their established sound. The album topped the US Billboard 200 albums chart, their third album in a row to do so, selling over 270,000 album-equivalent units. The album topped five other national album charts in its opening week as well.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
The prog metal band’s fifth album is exactly what you’d expect from a project over a decade in the making: a more mature, sometimes exciting collection that feels both overworked and undercooked.
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NME.com
The Los Angeles progressive group's first album in 13 years is, at times, a languid and blissful work – one that will richly reward future listens. They are the 'feeling person's' metal band
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Rolling Stone
13 years since their last LP, the veteran art-metal megastars make a case for their relevance.
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SPIN
Tool’s Fear Inoculum Is a Transcendent Return.
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NPR
Tool, the enigmatic and influential, progressive hard rock band has its first album since 2006. The band's new album Fear Inoculum was worth the 13-year wait.
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Forbes
With 30 years of experience, the band has truly aged well, and Fear Inoculum proves that to every degree, despite its familiarity flaw. This fifth record does feel like the best album Tool could have made as their final act, their swan song.
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Consequence of Sound
Tool Prove the Wait Was Worth It on the Epic Fear Inoculum. The 86-minute opus is best heard with full, unbridled attention.
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Variety
After a 13-year layoff, the art-damaged metal of Maynard James Keenan and company is back, as challenging and satisfying as ever.
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Blabbermouth.net
The wait has been worth it. "Fear Inoculum" is a tour de force in prog rock, hard rock, metal and psychedelic madness.
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Louder
Tool - Fear Inoculum review: an enigma inside Pandora’s box. Tool's Fear Inoculum album follows LA’s multi-dimensional metallers as they journey beyond all expectations.
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Metal Injection
It’s no secret that Tool likes to create a full experience for the listener, often requiring multiple listens to fully immerse them in understanding, but this is easily the band’s most substantial and multidimensional offering to date.
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The Atlantic
Back with new music after a 13-year hiatus, the legendary metal band is as precise and devastating as it has always been.
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EW.com
Tool's Fear Inoculum is a deeply satisfying return to form. All the hallmarks of the band's last two albums — 2001's Lateralus and 2006's 10,000 Days — are revisited and reinvented.
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Loudwire
For the first time in over 13 years, we can finally say it once again — it's Tool day. After what felt like an eternity waiting for new music from our prog lords, Fear Inoculum was released today. . . . Fear Inoculum is an 85-minute musical journey.
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The Guardian
Every track is an epic on this almighty fifth album from a band intent on securing their status as masters of metal.
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Stereogum
Tool remain Tool, and they’ve made a rewarding and maddening album that obsessives are never going to shut up about. Don’t let that stop you from diving in.
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UPROXX
. . . this sounds like an album that could have come out in 2009. Or 1999. It just sounds like a classic Tool record. Fear Inoculum is the alt-metal Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
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Metal Storm
I was not disappointed by Fear Inoculum, and I look forward to continuing to revisit it and further familiarize myself with it.
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Brooklyn Vegan
Tool’s ‘Fear Inoculum’ is an atmospheric new chapter of their career. Fear Inoculum is Tool’s most ambient album without sounding too sleepy and their most psychedelic album without sounding over the top trippy.
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Sonic Perspectives
Tool still function as a unit, as a band, as a tool and as a catalyst to find out whatever it is you need to find out, or whatever it is you’re trying to achieve. Welcome back guys, it’s been way too long.
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The 405
For now, it is incumbent upon me to state that whilst Fear Inoculum is not the legacy-tarnishing debacle some had feared, it does stand as TOOL’s least essential release yet.
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The Ringer
Tool have rewarded your extraordinary patience—and ignored, when applicable, your longstanding derision—with a lumbering, wizened, decadent behemoth that will itself require a great deal of patience, but reward it, too. Let it—let you—sink in.
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Medium
While “Fear Inoculum” clearly takes us back, there are also stylistic developments that feel new, yet very TOOL. This can only be a win-win because, like the actual universe, it implies the TOOL universe is expanding, as well.
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When The Horn Blows
‘Fear Inoculum’ has been a long time coming, it’s obvious. What makes it such a spectacular form of art is that it is TOOL through and through.
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Exclaim!
Musically, Tool have taken the best of Lateralus's dynamism and the heaviness of 10,000 Days to explore the middle ground with great length on Fear Inoculum. Those who stuck it out through the decade-plus wait won't mind hanging around a little longer until the album's close.
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411MANIA
The album is a brilliant slow moving behemoth worthy of your patience and careful consideration. There might be a lack of impetus, but there is no shortage of virtuosity, tenderness or sprawling lyrical playing. Yet, sadly, it is this ferocious potential and unrivalled craftsmanship that makes for a frustratingly listen.
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Esquire
After a 13-year wait, I was worried about Fear Inoculum. I should have never been a doubter. I liked it, and much like previous Tool albums, the more I listen the more I’ll like it. It will keep growing on me because I will keep growing.
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Junkee
Tool’s ‘Fear Inoculum’ Is An Urgent, Breathtaking Return
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Sputnik Music
The long-anticipated and infamous new Tool album was worth the long wait; it’s a massive, compelling piece of music that unfolds beautifully and balances their unique style with plenty of rewarding new elements.
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Ultimate-Guitar
The album is not without its flaws, with its exhausting buildups and lack of any real accessible hooks, but if you're a progressive metal fan, there's a lot to enjoy on "Fear Inoculum", and it's clear that this will be the kind of record that will take a lot of time to fully digest and understand, growing with its listener.
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The Pine Log
'Fear Inoculus' a lukewarm return for Tool. It's not really bad, but it's not really that good either.
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The Federalist
Long-Awaited Tool Album ‘Fear Inoculum’ Is Musical Perfection. The new Tool album us not just any album: it’s one that places demands on the listener. It’s an album we can wear out listen to on repeat, and come back to.
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LA Weekly
The long and short of all this is that Fear Inoculus really is a great album, and it really did require multiple listens.
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Metalsucks
But Fear Inoculum represents the best of what Tool are capable of doing in 2019, the very tip-top version of themselves. They didn’t phone it in. It’s focused, it’s grand, and it was worth the wait. In closing, don’t give up on Fear Inoculum if it didn’t grab you at first. Stick with it. It’s rewarding, I promise.
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Glide Magazine
. . . “Fear Inoculum” is a delicious appetizer as we head into the final weeks of waiting. It’s Tool doing what Tool does best, and the perfect reminder for both us and the band of what it was we’ve been missing these past 13 years.
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SXU
It is not my favorite Tool album, however, it is still a rather good one. It takes a few listens and with each one it grows on you. If you are into very artistic and progressive music this would be an epic album for you!
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ALTPRESS
TOOL PROVE ‘FEAR INOCULUM’ IS WELL WORTH THE 13-YEAR WAIT. The band’s first album in 13 years is completely deserving of your undivided attention, the clearest route from your head to your heart.
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Kerrang!
After a 13-year wait, Tool go beyond their own frontiers as they finally release their fifth album Fear Inoculum. . . . what we have is an album that pushes and challenges its creators and its audience in new ways, the finer details of which will probably take another 13 years to fully unwrap and appreciate.
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PopMatters
Tool Reclaim Their Crown with Some Caveats on 'Fear Inoculum'. Tool's Fear Inoculum meets nearly every expectation admirers could have and ranks as a worthwhile extension of the band's legacy.
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Riff Magazine
Tool gets back to what it does best on ‘Fear Inoculum’. Besides sending the bar for comeback albums into outer space, Tool’s fifth album is the sound of the band reveling in its genre-defining, irreplaceable prog-rock.
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Viper Times
. . . you are given a brilliant album that will be a certain classic among both Tool and rock fans alike. If Fear Inoculum is any telling of how Tool will continue to grow as a musical enigma, fans should definitely be excited for what is to come in later years.
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Clash Magazine
It's a masterpiece...
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All Of Sound
Fear Inoculum is a masterpiece that will be unpacked, studied and scrutinised over for years to come. Tool has not so much reinvented the wheel, as they have refined everything about this band that makes them so special in the first place.
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Ghost Cult Magazine
Masterful music made by masters. The band left everything on the table, and nothing used feels cheap. This Tool album is destined to be praised by fans, hated by trolls, studied, copied, and followed, forever.
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Soundblab
. . . as a whole Fear Inoculum works surprisingly well. It’ll be polarizing and adulated at the same time often by the same individuals. This may be Tool’s last breath as the grey-haired foursome moves into the next decade, or it might be a long time before we see another album, but if this be the inevitable swan song of Tool, it’s a hell of a way to go out: on top.
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billboard
There's a lot to dissect, yes, but taken at face value, one thing's unmistakable: Tool is back, and age has not changed the band that's known as one of the foremost progressive metal acts.
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Financial Times
Fear Inoculum — immersive and involving. Melodies and rhythms gather force with careful harmonic progressions
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Spill Magazine
Fear Inoculum is here and Tool have achieved the unimaginable; not only have they surpassed the natural excitement and hype of a near decade and a half wait, but – and more impressively – they have managed to surpass even the loftiest of expectations from their fan base.
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AllMusic
. . . Tool managed to improve and perfect their sound even further, resulting in one of the strongest statements in their catalog. Whether 10,000 days or the actual 4,868, Fear Inoculum was well worth the wait.
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First Post
7emptestuous and awe-inspiring, but 13 years for 6 new songs is way too long. . . . this long-awaited LP is a triumphant return to form by one of metal's most divisive bands — either lauded as visionaries or dismissed as pretentious prats — and is almost worth the 13 years that fans have awaited it.
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The Needle Drop
Tool's comeback album Fear Inoculum is insufficient not only by the immaculate standards of the band's past work, but by the standards of rock and metal music at large.
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NZ Herald
Fear Inoculum, the long-awaited fifth studio album from the Los Angeles-based masters of psychedelic progressive metal, is everything you could have hoped for and more.
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Music and Riots
“Fear Inoculum has the beautiful and mysterious atmosphere only Tool knows how to conjure up”
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mxdwn.com
While 13 years is an agonizing amount of time to wait, Tool’s fifth studio album, Fear Inoculum, is 100 percent worth the wait.
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ReadJunk
Overall I think this was well worth the wait, although the interludes could have did a little more to glue the album together. If you’re venturing in to see what all the fuss is about I’d suggest you take your time with this, soak in a few uninterrupted listens and enjoy the fact another legendary band released an album that furthers their legacy.
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The Tartan
Fear Inoculum is a massive piece of music, and it’s a lot more rare to see something like that become super popular now. I will be listening to this album several more times, searching for new meaning in it, and paying attention to the musicality and picking up on new things.
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The Arts Fuse
Fear Inoculum is not a bad album. It’s not a great album either, and Tool has made some great albums. There are pleasing Toolisms throughout Fear Inoculum, but the familiarity can be dangerous. And Tool seemingly knows it.
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ABC
Truthfully, I’m struggling to hear much that’s new on this album. Richard Kingsmill The album is… good. Gemma Pike Fear Inoculum is a blindingly great listen, an invitation once again to enter Tool’s dark musical labyrinth. Karen Lung Fear Inoculum isn't necessarily perfect, but it's an album that more than satisfies and could just be enough to sustain fans for another lengthy dry-spell. Stepen Goodhew Ultimately though, Fear Inoculum is a bit like the wine Maynard's been making that got in the way of him finishing this thing. It’s an acquired taste. Lachie Macara "It is just phenomenal." Grant Lutwyche
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scenestr
13 Years Later. . . Tool Have Finally Completed Their ‘Fear Inoculum’ Homework Easy listening it is not, but the rewards are rich for those willing to invest their time deciphering its labyrinthine musical passages.
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Smells Like Infinite Sadness
But Fear Inoculum, proves that their unique musical bond remains wonderfully intact. While it doesn’t have the immediacy of past watermarks like Aenema, it is steeped in all the band’s sonic signatures.
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Metal Amino
Very amazing! For me personally there have always been songs on every tool album i dont enjoy as much as the rest of the album but on this i actually like all songs alot.
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Times Colonist
Tool’s Fear Inoculum will satisfy fans hungry after 13-year wait.
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Jazzandrock.com
The new album of TOOL „Fear Inoculum“ is a masterwork.
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The Pop Break
Tool haven’t forgotten their bread and butter on Fear Inoculum. They bring precision, musical prowess, and cerebral lyrics into a modern world that sometimes feels like it lacks all three.
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The Review
With “Fear Inoculum,” Tool has continued their reign of success and quality. Tool came back with a vengeance, and they’re out for blood on “Fear Inoculum.”
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SCENE/DADDY
As stated before, mystifying, perplexing and decisive are all perfect words to summarize this new set of tracks. The album itself is nothing short of everything lifelong fans could’ve asked for. Fear Inoculum is a perfect Tool album.
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Audioxide
Andre': For all the soaring solos, flowing basslines and delicious drumming, the outcome is almost always the same. Without any meaningful hooks or considerable climaxes, you’re left wondering what and who this is for, outside of rabid TOOL fans. Fred: Long, broody, instrumental-heavy albums have their place . . . but instead of poking into the frontier this gets mired in a kind of no-man’s land. This sounds like rock in slow motion. Andrew: I’m always suspicious of albums that extend to this length. Often a sign of indecision, it usually makes for a mediocre album that could’ve been tightened to be a far superior album.
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Metalhead World
Overall, Fear Inoculum is a very strong and triumphant return to the mainstage for Tool. Is it the best Tool album? Absolutely not, but by no means is it a bad record by their high standards.
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Moose Gazette
Tool, the enigmatic, progressive and influential hard rock band has its first since the year 2006. The new album of band Fear Inoculum was worth the 13-year wait.
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Cryptic Rock
A random assortment of any given half of these tracks would serve as a welcome addition to, and progression of, the Tool discography; having all seven (to ten) is an embarrassment of riches that will hold fans over until the next batch of songs graces the plain.
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AltWire
The album is on the whole an emotional rollercoaster with a mixture of tracks that could be played at parties, and songs for being alone in your room. Fear Inoculum is certainly a new twist for Tool.
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MusicTAP
The album is well done, but can’t hope to unseat your favorites. Give it a try and enjoy it for what it is, but recognize that your excitement about the event is cladding it in protection that a week or a month down the line won’t be there.
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Everblack Media
Fear Inoculum is a successful piece of art that ignites a response from the listener and in this regard I predict it will continue to evolve and change in the view of Tool fans eyes over the coming months as the bands is able to bring it to life in a live performance.
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No Ripcord
Fear Inoculum already feels like an event—It's the kind of grand statement that will equally delight and confound, where Tool allows themselves to highlight their technical prowess with uncompromising
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GIGsoup
If Fear Inoculum is your first taste of Tool then you may well be very happy with this album. But if you’re more familiar with what they’re capable of then it’s hard to not feel at least a bit disappointed after waiting 13 years for it.
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Metal Insider
I’m going to drink the Kool-Aid and admit, Fear Inoculum is a flawless untouchable masterpiece. So when’s the next Tool album?
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Proglodytes
Fear Inoculum is not a masterwork by Tool, but it is a great album by their standards, especially considering the pressures and anticipation. It succeeds as a logical step after 10,000 Days.
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rockodile reviews
. . . the most important question is whether Fear Inoculum was worth the wait. The answer is a definitive yes. If you’re wondering whether it’s a record that will touch your heart, soul and spirit, the answer is also a definitive yes.
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ACRN.com
Unfortunately, this album is, without question, TOOL’s worst project to date.
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Rock 'N' Load
Fear Inoculum is a stunning collection of tracks that only one band could deliver. Each and every band member was on point, thrusting out this beauty into the ether and like a bomb going off in the distance all await how it will be received.
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Belwood Music
All considered this album doesn’t live up to the hype, but then it was never going to. Thirteen years of anticipation from one of the most rabid fanbases in music; only perfection would do. While it’s not perfect, it’s a valuable addition to Tool’s body of work, and is one of the defining releases of 2019.
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Ambient Light
This is an album that has been created by eternal artists, weary and scarred they have poured their life’s work into compositions that will undoubtedly be revered, deliberated and held aloft for years to come.
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Metal Nexus
Just as the single “Fear Inoculum” alluded to, Tool are back with their unmistakable, trademark sound, but they’ve brought a few new tricks and a level of maturity and mastery that exceeds beyond anything we’ve heard from the band in the past.
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Rock Cellar Magazine
One thing is made apparent listening to Fear Inoculum all the way through, and that’s that this is a Tool record. This is an album made by the same quartet of musicians — Keenan, guitarist Adam Jones, drummer Danny Carey and bassist Justin Chancellor, and it has that unmistakable “Tool sound.”
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DEAD PRESS
With ‘Fear Inoculum’, Tool have given us the opus they always promised to, but have also found multiple ways to surprise us all the same.
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Get Rocked
Overall, Fear Inoculum is the answer to years of anticipation. It’s a sonically deep and masterfully executed album that will undeniably have replay value for years, as does most everything from Tool. If you have been looking for an album to play in the background of your everyday life, while occasionally headbanging every few minutes, then Fear Inoculum is what you need.
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Musikreviews.de
Once again " Fear Inoculum " has become a complex, demanding, very hard-to-get-through and ultimately beautiful album. "Ænima" and "Lateralus" are and will remain their reference works until further notice.
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Heavy Music Headquarters
But taken at face value, Tool have delivered an excellent album that lacks the immediacy (“The Pot”) and fury (“Ticks & Leeches”) of past albums, instead opting for pensive and deliberate, yet no less effective sprawling tracks.
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Review bei Stormbringer
TOOL has certainly managed to retain its distinctive sound, yet to release a record that differs far enough from its predecessors not to degenerate into a mere copy of itself.
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Transcended Music Blog
This is a worthy entry in the Tool-catalogue. . . . The songs just seem to get more interesting, the more I listen to them.
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Rock Sins
ITS A NEW TOOL ALBUM | It is as close to perfect as is possible at this stage in their career .
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Phoenix Rising
This is Tool at their Tooliest. Almost an hour and a half of experimental progressive metal that takes you on a journey that you never want to end.
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Vinyl Chapters
Uncompromising, uncomfortable, unapologetic and unparalleled. TOOL have delivered on their promise.
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SF Sonic
Tool have accomplished something on Fear Inoculum that no other band has done: make an album in the late stages of their career just as good as any of their classics. So, stop what you’re doing and give it a listen already!
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Empire ExtremeEmpire
I definitely think that this has everything a Tool fan needs or would want from an album.
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Alpha-Audio
We write too few music reviews on Alpha Audio. The reason is very simple: time, capacity ... But we cannot skip this. After thirteen years, the American TOOL suddenly comes up with Fear Inoculum. And poe: what a gem!
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The Musical Hype
Even after 13 years, TOOL manages to create quite the captivating and compelling alt-metal/prog-metal/rock record.
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ROKKERSPRESS
Fear Inoculum appears as a less mathematical disc, more played and with greater emphasis given to spontaneity and psychedelia. This works very well and creates the right escalation in the tracks.
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Audio Ink Radio
‘FEAR INOCULUM’ FEATURES THE DRAMA AND PASSION TOOL FANS LOVE.
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BurnYourEars Webzine
The consistent mood of the album makes "Fear Inoculum" a bit better than "10000 Days". Work number five manages to bring all the peculiarities of the TOOL sound to the very point in spite of complex, overlong songs.
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The Telegraph
While Fear Inoculum has proved itself worthy of the wait by surpassing expectations, getting rave reviews and climbing to the top of all music charts, what it should actually be credited for is bringing rock music back from the dead.
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Summa Inferno
If something is not broken, you don't have to fix it. 'Fear Inoculum' sounds like Tool and it should be. It is an album with huge arrangements, great moments and reminds us why we love this band.
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