Fear Inoculum

In 2006, Tool released their fourth studio album, 10,000 Days.[2] It topped the US Billboard 200 album chart and was certified platinum by the RIAA, indicating more than one million units sold, a month later.[2][3] The band toured heavily in support of the album, playing more than 200 shows through 2007.[4] After this, frontman Maynard James Keenan mentioned that he saw Tool breaking up in the near future, and focused on his side project, Puscifer.[5] However, by early 2008, at the 50th Grammy Awards, Keenan announced to MTV that the band would begin writing new material for their fifth studio album "right away".[6]

The band was quiet over the next few years, only with Tool's website announcing that guitarist Adam Jones, bassist Justin Chancellor, and drummer Danny Carey were working on instrumental material while Keenan focused his efforts on Puscifer.[5][7] The approach was consistent with what the band had done in the past, with Keenan waiting to write vocals and lyrics until instrumentals were completed.[8] In 2012, the band's website was updated again, with the webmaster writing that they had heard instrumental material that had "sounded like Tool…some of it reminiscent to earlier Tool stuff, with other parts pushing the envelope" and that they estimated that the album was around half done.[5][9]

Outside problems slowed progress on the album over the following years. In 2013, it was reported that two separate scooter accidents injured two undisclosed members of the band, eliminating nine days of planned “jamming” time.[10] Carey later revealed himself as one of the involved members, noting that he had been involved in a motorcycle accident that resulted in multiple cracked ribs, which caused him pain that further slowed recording.[5] Keenan summed up the album's progress at the time in a cooking analogy, explaining that "Basically right now it's a lot of ideas. There's no actual songs…It's still kind of noodles in a big basket. Lots of noodles, just no dishes."[5] In 2014, Jones and Carey revealed that complicated legal issues and court battles stemming from a 2007 lawsuit had been slowing down the process as well.[11] The issues stemmed from a lawsuit from a friend who claimed credit for artwork the band had used, but escalated after an insurance company involved sued the band over technicalities, leading to the band then counter-suing the insurance company.[11] The constant court battles and delays, coupled with other life obligations, limited the band's time for working on music, and drained members of their motivation to be creative and write music.[11] At the time, Carey stated that only one song was “pretty much done”, an untitled ten-minute track.[11] In 2015, Jones announced that the legal issues were completely over.[12]

Work on the album continued to progress through 2015 "slowly", according to Keenan.[5] Jones reported that the band had 20 different song ideas being developed.[14] The band toured, and debuted a new track, "Descending", in a shortened, incomplete form, according to Jones.[5] Jones also reported that instrumentals had been completed and passed on to Keenan to work on, though he hesitated to call any of the work "done".[5][14] While it was reported in early 2016 by the band's webmaster that it was largely just a few shorter songs and interludes that needed finishing,[15] by the end of the year, Chancellor described the band's status as still "deep into the writing process”.[16] He explained that while main themes and a loose "skeleton" had been established, Jones, Carey, and himself were continually creating and reworking new instrumental content.[16] This work on the album continued throughout 2017. At the time, Carey predicted finishing and releasing in mid-2018,[17] while Keenan countered these claims, stating it would likely take longer than that to finish.[5] Jones, Chancellor, and Carey continued to work on the album while Keenan returned to A Perfect Circle in late 2017 to work with Billy Howerdel to record and release their fourth studio album, Eat the Elephant, in early 2018. By February 2018, Keenan announced that he had received rough music files from the rest of the band members containing instrumentals labeled "FINAL" for all but one track on the album in the prior few months, and had since started writing lyrics and vocal melodies.[18]

In retrospect, Keenan recounted that the band constantly second-guessing themselves was a reason for the album taking so long, and that he believes the version of the album the band had going eight years ago in 2011 would have been "fantastic" too.[19] Chancellor noted that one of many guitar riffs used in the track “7empest” traced back to musical ideas written by Jones back in the mid-1990s. The band had tried to implement the riff into 10,000 Days without success as well.[19][20] Carey notes that there were no completed songs that were left off the album, but that there were many partial guitar riffs and jam sessions that went unused from the sessions.[21]

On March 10, 2018, Tool entered a major recording studio to start recording sessions with Joe Barresi, with whom they had worked on 10,000 Days.[8] On May 11, it was reported that all drum parts had been tracked.[5] In September, Keenan announced he had finished recording scratch vocals, but had not started final vocal takes.[8] Keenan recorded his vocals during the 2018 wine harvest at his Caduceus Cellars winery, resulting in him having to fit in his recording hours around his winemaking. Barresi and engineer Mat Mitchell traveled to his Arizona home for the recording process.[22] In January 2019, Keenan announced that he had finished his final vocal recording sessions "months ago", but that the album would still likely require lengthy mixing sessions.[23] In the same month, Carey stated that they aimed to release the album in April 2019,[24] though Keenan countered that this was unrealistic, instead pointing to a release between May and July.[25] The band was in the studio with Bob Ludwig in March 2019; Ludwig had also mastered 10,000 Days.[26][27]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	7.6/10[53]
Metacritic	81/100[54]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[55]
Clash	9/10[56]
Consequence of Sound	A−[34]
Entertainment Weekly	B+[57]
Financial Times	[58]
The Guardian	[59]
Kerrang!	5/5[60]
NME	[61]
Pitchfork	5.4/10[62]
Rolling Stone	[63]

Fear Inoculum received acclaim from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 81 out of 100, which indicates "universal acclaim" based on 23 reviews.[54] NME gave Fear Inoculum a perfect score, singling out Keenan's work as "perhaps the best collection of vocals that singer Keenan has ever committed to tape, with many lines exiting the vocalist's lips closer to the honey daubed croon of Keenan's ... A Perfect Circle than the coarse rasp of yore" and concluding that the album was "worth the wait".[61] The Boston Globe agreed with the sentiment, praising the album for being "an 80-minute prog-metal fever dream that proves the band is back and better than ever."[35] The Atlantic praised the album for being as good as prior releases, describing it as "precise and devastating as it has always been" containing a "nearly unhandle-able amount of that Tool feeling."[64] Spin praised the album "continu[ing] to blur the lines between art, psychedelia, alt metal, and prog rock with undiminished curiosity and skill" while "remain[ing] defiantly contrary to the auto-tuned, digitally-quantized world in which we now live."[33]

Loudersound (formerly Metal Hammer) praised the album's density and layer of sound, and singling out Keenan's "grandiosity" and "emotional" vocals and the album's heaviest track, "7empest", as album highlights.[65] Wall of Sound and Loudwire also singled out the track as one of the best of the band's career, with the former concluding that with the album on a whole, the band had "not so much reinvented the wheel, as they have refined everything about this band that makes them so special in the first place."[66][67] AllMusic noted that all four band members sounded like they were performing at the peak of their career so far.[55] Clash felt the album was a good entry point for new fans if they had patience for the album's long song lengths, which they praised, but conceded were not in line with musical trends.[56] "7empest" was later nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance, as was "Fear Inoculum" for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song.[68] “7empest” would go on to win the award, while “Fear Inoculum” lost to Gary Clark Jr.[69] At the 2020 Billboard Music Awards, the album won Top Rock Album.[70]

The album was not praised by all critics. Pitchfork noted that "You get what is expected of an album over a decade in the making: a more mature, sometimes exciting collection that feels both overworked and undercooked ... It is hard to parse the difference between which choices here are wise and which are stale."[62]

In the United States, Fear Inoculum debuted atop the Billboard 200 chart, generating 270,000 album-equivalent units, of which 248,000 were pure sales, earning Tool their third number-one album in the country. The album was marketed in two different formats: a digital download album, and a limited-edition CD package that includes a HD screen with exclusive video footage, a speaker and a 36-page booklet. The CD package sold out at retail immediately, making Tool to announce an additional set of CD/download combinations through their website.[71] In the UK, Fear Inoculum debuted at number four with Lana Del Rey's Norman Fucking Rockwell! topping the chart that week.[72]