Tool Fans Will Finally Get to See the Band's First South Florida Show in a Decade

Tool is a difficult band to classify. It's a little too melodic to dump in the metal genre. And don't you dare let bassist Justin Chancellor hear you call Tool prog rock.

"I shy away from descriptions, but I really don't like the prog thing," he tells New Times during a break from the band's current tour. "I like to think it's music that stretches boundaries. It's music that I hope inspires people to be creative."

Before he was a member, Chancellor was as a fan of the California band, which formed in 1990.

"My brother had a record label in England. He had a friend in Los Angeles who signed Tool, and he sent us the demo on a cassette tape," he says. "I think the two of us were the first people in England to hear Tool."

Chancellor was playing with a band called Peach when Tool first found success. Tool's debut album, Undertow, with its breakout single "Sober" was unique to anything else bouncing around the radio airwaves in the early '90s. The band's music stood out as heavier, darker, and even more serious than the grunge that dominated the rock scene at the time.

It was after that initial splash of success that Chancellor joined the band.

"I flew out to LA from London and they took me out to dinner first," he remembers. "I was getting a bit nervous, and I asked if we could play already."

The audition went well enough that Chancellor has been a member of Tool for more than 25 years.

"I could play their songs, but I think what impressed them was I brought my own ideas," he says.

Two of the bass riffs from that audition ended up on songs — "Forty Six & 2" and "Jimmy," on the band's 1996 record Ænima.

Still, it took a while for Chancellor to feel comfortable as a member of Tool.

"I looked up to them. The hardest thing was to write new music," he explains. "It was easy to play their early music. When it came from me, I got too critical. The thought of whether these new songs could fit with the songs I admired was intimidating."

Tool's material post-Chancellor continued to find critical and commercial acclaim. With him, the band has earned four Grammys, topped album charts, and solidified a diehard fanbase. But as the years have passed, new songs have been harder to come by. Tool's latest record, 2019's Fear Inoculum, was its first in 13 years.

"It was grueling. We kept thinking we were getting somewhere, and then we scrapped all the songs. We never tried to rush it," Chancellor says.

The pandemic struck in the middle of the band's tour in support of the album. (A Miami concert date had been scheduled for April 2020.) But after several delays, Tool is finally playing FTX Arena on February 10 — the band's first South Florida show in a decade.

Chancellor says the band is still figuring out how to translate songs off Fear Inoculum into a live setting.

"We're still trying to nail them live and integrate them with the older songs," he adds. "'Culling Voices' with its three guitars in a two-part song has been challenging, especially with my heavy bass hand playing guitar. 'Tempest' is also long and complicated, but we've been rehearsing it every day."

Despite the challenges, fans can look forward to a no-holds-barred live show.

"It's a complete bombardment of all your senses. It's almost like seeing a really great movie," Chancellor promises.

Of course, Tool fans come out for more than spectacle. They want the musicianship that isn't quite metal and not quite prog, and they want to sing along to what Chancellor considers the band's not-so-secret weapon: Maynard James Keenan's lyrics.

"I find the way he puts his ideas and words together to be very poetic," Chancellor says. "It's intelligent and smart. He gives you interesting ideas but leaves them open-ended. He doesn't tell you exactly what he's saying. They let you make up your own mind."

Tool. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, February 10, at FTX Arena, 601 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; ftxarena.com. Tickets cost $61 to $146 via ticketmaster.com.