The Tool Summer 2017 tour is done; capped off with a huge show at San Bernadino this evening. I’ve been holding back posting much about the tour, as I don’t really want to spoil it for those who are attending shows, but now that were all done, here’s a re-cap of what went down:
- Tool played much the same setlist each night. Â It was a pretty good one, though some are critical that it doesn’t include Lateralus:
- The Grudge
- Parabol
- Parabola
- Schism (typically the extended version)
- Opiate (the new extended version – more on this further down)
- Ænema
- Descending
- Jambi
- Third Eye
- Forty-Six & 2
- ~12 minute intermission
- Drum Solo
- The Pot/Vicarious/Eulogy
- Sweat
- Stinkfist (typically the extended version)
- Vicarious was played at most shows, with Eulogy once in Hershey, PA and then The Pot at several others. Â Those at the San Bernadino show were lucky enough to see both Vicarious and The Pot.
- The Pot was accompanied by some cool new video footage some speculate may be the video that was recorded for it sometime many years ago. Â There has been no official confirmation of this.
- The stage configuration was similar to the past couple of tours, with a few new lights in stage, as well as lasers placed in the centre of the main video wall (which made for a few cool effects). Â Despite bans on recording, there’s plenty of footage of the show on Youtube for those curious.
- The posters for the shows were variations of the bug theme used on recent tours. Â While this may seem a little disappointing, the poster quality was pretty high with a foil type paper used on many of them. (image pinched from pooptank55 on Reddit)
- The San Bernadino show had a one off poster by Adi Granov. Â Image taken from Adi Granov’s Instagram account
- Speaking of San Bernadino, despite a few suggestions otherwise there didn’t appear to be much “special” about the set. Â As previously mentioned, they played a song longer than usual, but there were no guest slots from what I’ve heard. Â Given the quality of the support acts, no doubt it was a great day, but the Tool set didn’t appear to be much out of the ordinary.
- From the videos I’ve watched, I have to say the band are in really good nick. Â Maynard’s vocals are as good as they’ve been for quite some time now, in fact probably the strongest since 10,000 Days.
- Reports from the VIP sessions sound like they were much the same as those in the past, with one important distinction – attendees were shown part of the new video for Opiate (which is strongly suspected to be the “curveball” Blair has referred too over the years). Â The whole video wasn’t shown, but what was shown was reportedly excellent. Â Accompanying the video is a new recording of the extended version of the song, including new vocals from Maynard. Â Nor release date for this was given, though I read that Adam suggested this could be released digitally at the appropriate time.
Here’s a collection of reviews from the tour:
- Raymont Flotat from mxdwn.com
- Andrew Bansal from metalassault.com
- Johnny Firecloud from Antiquiet
tl;dr a couple of minor surprises, otherwise the same old (albeit high quality) Tool show