Tool at the North Shore Events Centre

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Welcome back to the Tool shed. The influential American art-metal band, which enjoys a high per-capita popularity in this part of world, was back less than a year after last playing the North Shore sports hangar-cum-concert venue.

Their last appearance coincided with the release of their long-awaited third album, Lateralus.

Didn't catch them then (a spot of down-tools intervened), but I'd seen them on their thrilling first visit when they were at the same venue some years earlier.

And there has been a valiant attempt to come to grips with Lateralus, an album which further reinforced the notion that they were this metal generation's answer to the deathless progressive rock of the 70s.

Interestingly, in between their last tour and this visit, they played some American dates with the latest incarnation of prog-royalty King Crimson, which rather confirms the theory.

A big part of Tool's ongoing art statement has been their grim but mesmerising videos, directed mainly by guitarist Adam Jones.

These have translated heavily into the look and feel of the live show, with three video screens carrying a constant, looped stream of Tool's macabre psychedelia.

One of these silhouetted singer Maynard James Keenan at the back of the stage as he wailed and contorted from one gargantuan number of alienation, despair and quite possibly misery, to another.

After a while, one eight-minute epic was starting to sound pretty much like the next.

And the video accompaniment became less impressive as the night wore on, even when a couple of dancers emerged from the wings for a quick stoop around the stage.

Sure, you could always admire the playing, especially that of bassist Justin Chancellor, whose jagged riffs are the foundation for many of Tool's more memorable songs, and the drumming of Danny Carey, whose strangely tuneful, unconventional time-signature, octopus-like playing made compelling lopsided rock grooves.

But judging from the reaction of the near-sellout crowd, what the performance lacked was a sense of connection with the audience.

It was a take-it-or-leave-it performance that intrigued for its unorthodox approach and just how few of those very long songs Tool could get through.

Yep, they sure did have lots of big ideas going on up there. But that didn't mean it was very exciting down here.