Thursday, June 7, 2007
Scene & Herd Live Review: Tool at the Arena at Gwinnett Center, June 4th
Posted by Abi Berwager on Thu, Jun 7, 2007 at 10:36 PM
It was a long wait before Tool took the stage at Gwinnett Arena 20 minutes late Monday night.
As the first guitar rifts of “Jambi,†from the band’s latest album, 10,000 Days, filled the arena, there was a deafening scream, and it was actually hard to hear lead vocalist Maynard James Keenan for the first few words. But as soon as he began to sing, it seemed to be eerily quiet as everyone became enthralled with his voice and the guttural sound of the band beside him.
Following “Jambi,†Keenan asked, “What’s up, Georgia?†and unfortunately that was all he had to say the entire show. Tool fans, and even people who are not Tool fans who know of Keenan, can agree he is not the typical “rock-star†kind of guy. The band likes to stay out of the spotlight and let its music speak for itself. For the entire two-hour show, it was all music, no silence or even a spoken word from the band. Keenan disappeared every once in a while backstage when he was not needed for vocals in certain songs. When he was on stage, he appeared as a shadow, staying as far back as possible, close to the huge screen portraying the different art and videos that accompanied the songs.
At the end of the show, even though everyone in the arena was begging for more — even after a two-hour performance — Keenan merely had a group hug with the band on stage, walked off, and left the rest of them — Adam Jones, Danny Carey and Justin Chancellor — to take in the applause and bow.
The musicality of the show was phenomenal, regardless of the lack of interaction with the audience. One could look at this as a favor the band was doing for the fans, in that they just let the music, spectacular laser show and art speak for themselves, and there was no need for words to dampen the experience. I left the show feeling a high I had not experienced before (and I do not think it was because of the people smoking their smuggled-in illegal substances above me). It was because I had attended a one-of-a-kind, brilliantly performed “art-metal†show, which I would recommend to anyone looking for a deep experience.
Photo courtesy ToolBand.com.
Comments (4)
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The tool show gets an A, but the Gwinnett Arena gets a D. Or should I say, the city/county gets a D. It took me 30 minutes to get off the highway and get the the arena, and another 30 minutes to get back onto the highway. There was not a single traffic cop the entire route. Instead, thousands of cars were slowly winding their way through the traffic light system that appeared to be set the same as they would have been any given Tuesday afternoon. It was a disaster. Dan
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I agree!! I waited in that line as well, and was almost late to the performance...even though we left an hour early....we missed the first band unfortunately. Was their name actually "Melting Banana"? or did I hear that wrong?
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