Today, August 7th, fans’ 13-year wait for actual, studio-recorded, final-product new Tool music came to an end with the release of “Fear Inoculum,” the 10-minute-plus title cut off the band’s forthcoming fifth album. Full of meditative tablas, spiraling riffs and prog-metal movements, the song is an epic, transcendent ride. Singer Maynard James Keenan whispers, croons and preaches above it all, appearing to expound upon the larger theme behind the song’s and the album’s title.
“I feel like this is [about] wisdom through age, through experience,” Keenan explains of that theme in Revolver’s new 20-page cover story. “Hopefully through aging you find wisdom in some of the things you’ve encountered. Learning from your mistakes, learning from your successes. So if anything is a broad stroke of this album, it would be embracing where we are right now, acknowledging where we’ve come from and some of the things we’ve grown through.”
Of course, Tool never print Keenan’s lyrics, which means that fans get to process, interpret and debate them — and post their best guesses online. Which has happened already with “Fear Inoculum.” Read one particularly fine lyrical best-estimate below, courtesy of Genius.
“Fear Inoculum” lyrics:
[Verse 1]
Immunity
Long overdue
Contagion
I exhale you
Lying
I opened up to you
Venom in mania
[Bridge 1]
Now, contagion
I exhale you
[Spoken Bridge]
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 I hear them now inhale the clarity
Hear the venom, the venom in
What you say inoculated
Bless this immunity
Bless this immunity
Bless this immunity
[Chorus]
Exhale, expel
Recast my tale
Weave my allegorical elegy
[Verse 2]
Enumerate
All that I’m to do
Calculating steps away from you
My own
Mitosis
Growing through
Delusion from mania
[Chorus]
Exhale, expel
Recast my tale
Weave my allegorical elegy
[Post-Chorus]
Forfeit
All control
You poison
You spectacle
[Bridge 2]
Exorcise the spectacle
Exorcise the malady
Exorcise the disparate
Poison for eternity
Purge me and evacuate
The venom and the fear that binds me
[Verse 3]
Unveil now
Lift away
I see you
Running
Deceiver
Chased away
A long time
Coming