Frontman Maynard James Keenan and bassist Justin Chancellor fist-bumped at the end of the first night of their Auckland shows. Photo / @toolband
Frontman Maynard James Keenan and bassist Justin Chancellor fist-bumped at the end of the first night of their Auckland shows. Photo / @toolband
If you asked me where I would expect to see a Mexican wave, a Tool concert would not be on my list of answers. But it’s 2025 and here we are.
Last night at a full Spark Arena in Auckland, I joined thousands of black T-shirted Toolheads and head-nodded tofour aliens in an art metal band who threatened to give us all Covid “again” if we didn’t put away our phones.
It’s been nearly six years since Tool played in the city, which led to New Zealand’s first big Covid scare. But it’s been 14 years since I had seen them (RIP Big Day Out). I could smell weed in the air then. I could smell weed in the air now.
“Sorry about that whole Covid thing,” Maynard James Keenan said to fans after performing the opening with the Lateralus (2001) track The Grudge, a song the US band has opened several shows with previously. You could see why. The instrumental build-up and Keenan’s scream vibrates the heart.
As usual, the band set a strict phone boundary with fans. “Put your f*****g phones away. It’s a different experience tonight,” said a panda-eyed, mohawked Keenan. “Or I’m going to give you Covid again.”
Tool fans are so cultishly attached that they actually (mostly) obeyed. Never mind the mind-bending visuals tickling the third eye. Or the rare two-hour set list featuring songs from several studio albums most would never have seen live. (A clear lesson learned from March’s Tool in the Sand debacle, where fans flirted with issuing the band a class-action lawsuit for giving them a repetitive setlist at a festival in the Dominican Republic.) One must respect Keenan.
Tool served Auckland with a special set list. Photo / Getty Images
The frontman and vocalist of the three-time Grammy-winning group performed entirely in shadow at the back of the stage. Not once did the lights beam on Keenan. Instead, the staging effects heroed his comrades and maestros behind the complex soundscape: drummer Danny Carey, bassist Justin Chancellor and guitarist Adam Jones.
It worked well. The band wanted you to worship the musicianship and the fans were fixated on doing so.
Especially that one guy in the crowd holding out his arms as if to carry the hefty planet shown on the video wall, absorbing its power. Very Dragon Ball Z.
“Some of these songs we haven’t played since you were sperm,” said Keenan after asking the under-25s to raise their hands. Straight afterwards, the band performed Crawl Away from its first studio album, Undertow (1993), for the first time since the 90s. H. from Ænima (1996) also returned from the dead. Tool hadn’t performed it for a crowd in 22 years.
And so began the longest wait after the audience call for an encore I’ve experienced after Intolerance.
This is how the Mexican waves started. It started for the same reason it always starts. Out of idleness. Fans grew tired of cheering, clapping and stamping their feet. Some started booing. Are we being trolled? Or is the show really over? There was no weed in the air at this point.
After 15 minutes of waiting, a five-minute countdown appeared on the screen at 10.05pm. When it hit 00.00, Carey emerged in an anatomical-chakra bodysuit and slowly melted into Fear Inoculum album art. We said hello to Chocolate Chip Trip.
Whoever booed surely forgave quickly for phones were allowed again. And the most breathtaking psychedelic theatrics of fire, eyeballs and humanoids were on.
The band surprised with encore track No 2: a cover of Black Sabbath’s Hand of Doom. Tool last played it at late rock legend Ozzy Osbourne’s tribute in Birmingham, UK, in July. “Rest in peace, Ozzy,” said Keenan at the song’s end.
The closing was Invincible. Epic and hypnotic.
Toolheads knew they were lucky. This setlist was as rare as a diamond. Aucklanders got to have that diamond on the first night.
