After five years between albums and nearly four years without playing live, you'd think Tool might be rusty, but at the Joint on May 5, they were anything but. It was only the fourth show of the band's tour behind its latest album, 10,000 Days, but they sounded like a well-oiled machine, even when technical difficulties caused a guitar tech to step in for guitarist Adam Jones on "Forty-Six & 2."
As their songwriting has gotten more epic, Tool hasn't shied away from attempting to re-create their intricate compositions onstage, and the Joint show opened with the short instrumental "Lost Keys (Blame Hoffman)" and segued into "Rosetta Stoned," both from 10,000 Days, making for a nearly 15-minute opening. The crowd went wild for "Stinkfist," from 1996's Aenima, but they'd also clearly studied the new album, because they went just as wild for new song "The Pot."
The band downplays its own image, and a Tool concert is less a performance than a recital. The stage lights rarely shine on the band, and singer Maynard James Keenan de-emphasizes his frontman status by standing in back, next to the drums. Video screens that would normally show the band instead played trippy, surreal images. Since almost everyone in the Joint had a good view, though, the effect was less distancing than it can be in the arenas the band typically plays.
Keenan has also loosened up a little since the band's last tour, hitting the stage shirtless, sporting a mohawk, aviator sunglasses and, later, a cowboy hat, and offering a couple of requisite Vegas jokes.
Even though the rest of the band barely moved, the performance was powerful and tight, showcasing drummer Danny Carey's precision and Jones' layered guitar mastery. Songs that sound almost antiseptic on record came across as raw and visceral, even when they went on for 10 minutes. The selection was light on early material but featured enough hits ("Sober," "Aenema," "Schism") mixed with newer tracks to satisfy die-hard and casual fans alike. It was a triumphant return.