the Turn of TOOL

The turn of Tool has initialized with the sound of Fear Inoculum and it came with the Great Turn character, a twisty-double-figure turned out by Alex Grey:

This turn, after thirteen years, has a deeper meaning, of course. But when overthinking fades away there starts the simplest awakening…just follow the white rabbit…it is here on your face to lift you up or drag you down.

Too many TOOL fans wrote about this story and the logic is obvious. I’ll gloss some of these, try to gather them together and tell my story on it.

First things first, collect the evidence and try to see Fear Inoculum with a different perspective:

1. In the album cover, The 7empest-Head character is on the left and The Pneuma-Head character is on the right, “ the one descending (‘Petulant stench and demeanour’), other one ascending (‘Eyes full of wonder’),. A polar unity, held within a spiral.”
2. “As usual, clues have been left scattered throughout. Listening on CD, when the final track finishes, the CD skips back to the beginning and repeats, the circle turns, the cycle repeats.”
3. “The track Litanie Contre la Peur is a musical palindrome — it can be played forwards or backwards.”
4. “On Billboards advertising the album launch, the album cover-image was flipped and mirrored, suggesting two directions of movement.”
5. “The new golden ‘TOOL’ logo, when flipped over on itself, becomes a syringe. Ready for your inoculation?”
6. “When the band was touring with a 2-minute preview of Descending, the track was called Ascending/Descending — and this track sits in the centre of the album, pointing in both directions.”
7. “This sense of splitting down the middle is found in both the twisty-figure of the artwork and in the title track, where the world ‘mitosis’ is sung at the mid-point (to the second) of the song. Cells divide. Light from Dark.”

I was sceptical from the beginning of the listening process of Fear Inoculum. All the other 6 albums has a story from dark to light, why is the 7th one has a reverse order?

Maynard talked about the journey we are taking for each album, a long time before:

“Tool is exactly what it sounds like: It’s a big dick. It’s a wrench. … we are … your tool; use us as a catalyst in your process of finding out whatever it is you need to find out, or whatever it is you’re trying to achieve.” -MJK (1994)

“Fear Inoculum appears to offer a regression. Or perhaps it isn’t a regression, but a double-movement, both forwards and backwards — towards clarity and resolution on one hand, and towards anger and darkness on the other.”

So the Turn has began to gather its meaning. But, before going further, we better clarify, why seven is the key for the album?

1. “There are 7 chakras in the subtle body, the 7th being the Crown chakra (located above the 6th, the ‘Third Eye’.)”
2. “In Christian and Jewish mysticism, 7 is associated with God and spiritual perfection.”
3. 7 is the number of enlightenment.
4. “7 also suggest time passing and a turning, a cycle completed.”
5. 7 days in the week and we return to the beginning.”
6. Saturn returns after 4 cycles of 7, after 28 years
7. And finally, for making a Seeds of Life, you need 6 circles and a container circle of them all:

This is the critical moment we came in, the whole concept started from 7, in numerology, it is well known, all mathematical shapes come from the matrix of Flower of Life, and for this matrix, we have to initiate a seed of life, the core structure of life. It has six circles and a main context of them. What a coincidence, we have six songs in this album and a title song which covers all.

“Not as a linear progression into the light, but a cyclical process, where the way forward is the way backwards, where the way up is also the way down, and where we return to earlier expressions, more primal influences, to move forward. The spiral turns, and the polarities hold together or split apart.”

Inhale for a moment…

“With Fear Inoculum, Tool has completed a cycle of 7 records, and Fear Inoculum sees the cycle turn, both bursting through the Crown chakra into the light, as one half of the character in The Great Turn video, ‘become Pneuma’. But also, regressing to the mud and grit of the beginning — a many-armed character who evokes Opiate, 7empest evoking the sounds of Undertow, particularly Flood. Sure, we might be ‘sun becoming’. But the waters are still rising around our feet.”

So, we have six songs. Every song related to a Tool album. You can read the relations from this article: The Deeper Meaning: My Take on the Hidden Genius of Fear Inoculum (the correct listening order, and TOOL’s tribute to their career…).

You can easily see that every new song has similarities from the past, except one: Fear Inoculum. It holds the past and the future Tool, together. It is the turn, it is the epilogue of the entire process of 6 songs. It is the immunity, it is the inoculum. New stuff is Fear Inoculum, but it represents the whole career of Tool. It has also two parts in it and divides with Mitosis, as I’ve mentioned earlier.

So, you can listen to the album from both sides. But:

“What if 7empest is meant to be an opener?”

“Taking all the hints and reversing the album’s playlist connects the dots. Played in this order, the lyrics reveal a story where mankind is self-centred (7empest and Culling Voices) and needs to overcome this (Descending and Invincible) before coming at peace that “we are one breath… one life” (Pneuma) and ultimately, we’ve accepted the “fears that bind us” (Fear Inoculum).”

Now, it makes sense. You can go either way, all the way up or down, you can be at the middle when Ascending/Descending is playing…But, if you find your self comfortable, try all of them in reverse.

Lastly, I will try to summarize all cycle turn, with the interludes included, in reverse order. This is the interpretation part so don’t take it too seriously.

1. Mocking Beat: There are mockingbirds and mocking beats in it, isn’t it? Mockingbirds are best known for the habit of some species mimicking the songs of other birds and the sounds of insects and amphibians. This might be the fake swan song (a song like that fabled to be sung by a dying swan) “before the havoc begins”…So obvious, so delusional, so imitational but so real at the same time.
2. 7empest: You and me and all the world is in conflict and delusion, started from ourselves as an individual. With the technology we drive-in, there has so many areas, concepts and mediums that we can express ourselves. But the meaning and meaninglessness has come together and we can not reach the truth within these layers of simulations, grifting and spinning altogether. On these moments, 7empest (We know your nature) comes and lull us in.

“Insane and striking at random
Victim of your certainty
And therefore your doubt’s not an option”

3. Chocolate Chip Trip: seems like an ironic trip, not like the others; not like Merkhaba or Third-Eye. It is ironic and mocking beat, remind us we are still on the dark side and struggling with the fear of 7empest.

4. Culling Voices: Suspicious tendencies, Imagined interplay and Psychopathy misleading us, obviously, because the fear of 7empest has started its effects. We have doubt now but struggling and repeating the phrase; Don’t you dare point that at me.

5. Ascending/Descending: We are so ignorant and floating in this ignorance and boundlessness. “This madness of our own making.” At last, we barely see the paradox between birth and death. “To be or not to be.”

“Stir us from our
Wanton slumber
Mitigate our ruin
Call us all to arms and order”

We know, we will call all to arms and order and overcome from this fear but we can not see it yet. It is very normal because we have just crossed to the light side at the middle of the song and later:

“Rise
Stay the grand finale
Stay the reading of our swan song and epilogue”

This three lines are critical. Now, The swan song (ancient Greek: κύκνειον ᾆσμα; Latin: carmen cygni) is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement. Simply, the final performance or activity of a person’s career. As we said before, it is also, a song like that fabled to be sung by a dying swan.

First things first, fake swan song is MockingBeat but ironically it is made by real MockingBeats. The birth/death dilemma has mentioned in Ascending/Descending in this grand finale, this swan song. The final performance before death. But, the real swan song is Pneuma. Yet, we do not know what it is. Stay reading, Maynard says, our swan song and epilogue, because after Pneuma there would the closing words of Fear Inoculum.

6. Legion Inoculant: The backwards tracked Maynard lyrics on “Legion Inoculant” are lines from “Culling Voices”

“Don’t you dare point that at me, don’t you dare, don’t you dare” and “Psychopathy, don’t you dare point that at me”

Because this song’s placement is at the right time of the opposite of Culling Voices. Legion Inoculants came…From the fear and its psychopathy, the inoculum has been created. We are beginning to learn about immunity, initialized from the darkness itself.

7. Invincible: We are still struggling, but we feel fresh and new. We have just psychologically dead. But, we know life is still going…

We always, seems to be powerful and determined. Like a soldier, always, stick to the plan, the order, the command.

For the first time:

“Now the armor’s wearing thin
Heavy shield down”

Once, we are invincible but now all our inside becomes outside. Still struggling to remain relevant, to remain consequential. Because life is so…

Now, we totally lost. Do not know where we are. Is it the end?

“Of where I’ve been
But here I am
Where I end”

In the dark side, We always heard the mockingbeat, the fake epilogue the simulated fable, but with the call of Descending, we started to hear…We’ve left all false hopes. And…

“Before now, feel the sting
Feeling time bearing down”

After the call of death, we came across to Invincible. We do not know what is death means. No one knows. It is mysterious. Maybe later, it will be described. But, Invincible tells us, the birth and death paradox has revealed and time is bearing down.

8. Litanie contre la Peur: is French for “litany against fear.” It is likely taken from Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic Dune. Very well picked litany for the case of Fear Inoculum. Further reading on this link.

9. Pneuma: This is the grand finale. This is the awakening. In all six albums before, TOOL, secretly, described this. But now, it is so obvious. No words can explain. It shines and blinds us with the truth.

You can inspect the concept in Pushit, Third Eye, The Patient, Parabol/Parabola, Reflection, Triad, Jambi, etc…

Now, we see, we are one, not separate…this light shines on us and fear has been disappearing... Now we see the fear and know it is the part of us. It is us. And can look at it directly. The evaporation of fear has been completed.

10. Fear Inoculum: Arter a long overdue, the new album and a new immunity came. The Inoculum is this song but the inoculation is the whole process of six songs together. This epilogue is brief information on it.

We exhale contagion and inhale the immunity. For this, we accept it, as a whole. Before, 7empest as the deceiver:

“The deceiver says, he says
You belong to me
You don’t wanna breathe the light of the others
Fear the light
Fear the breath
Fear the others for eternity”

But, we saw its game and:

“Bless this immunity”

Before, we always calculating the steps, in delusion with the culling voices inside. But now, Our Mitosis has been created for this immunity.

Now, we know the fear and have immunity over it. This epilogue summarized it, in this way.

“Deceiver
Chased away
A long time
Coming”

Over a decade later, fresh and outstanding inoculation to TOOL lovers. Listening to this album (Recommended with headphones) is the TOOL, for you to make your own immunity and chase the deceiver away.