Metal mainstays Tool blast away the gloom in long-awaited Minnesota return

A band that takes its own sweet time to do just about everything, Tool is also one band for whom the two-year COVID lull was no big whoop.

Sunday's postponed Target Center gig by the Los Angeles-reared prog-metal gurus even seemed to benefit from the long wait. About 15,000 fans turned out and turned on in a big way, absorbing the quartet's loudly vibrating rhythms and wicked psychedelic meanderings like nocturnal flowers soaking up darkness.

Fans also had a couple extra years to get familiar with the songs on Tool's new record — a good thing, since those accounted for nearly half of the 2¼-hour performance.

Of course, "new" is a relative term on Planet Tool. The band went even longer than usual between albums — 13 years — before finally releasing 2019's "Fear Inoculum." So those songs are still very fresh in fans' minds.

As drummer Danny Carey, guitarist Adam Jones and bassist Justin Chancellor locked into the title track's low-throbbing groove to kick off the show, fans anticipated the build-up and cheered loudly when frontman Maynard James Keenan walked out from the shadows to begin singing.

"Exhale, expel, recast my tale / Weave my allegorical elegy," Keenan sang ever-so-cryptically. Sporting a spiky mohawk haircut and ghoulish eye makeup, he looked like someone who'd streamed one too many post-apocalyptic TV shows during lockdown.

Always enigmatic and ambiguous in concert — he once again stayed in the dark at the back of the stage the whole show — Keenan was atypically direct as he addressed the crowd in the second song, "Opiate," from the band's early-'90s rise.

"There's been a lot of crazy [stuff] the last couple years, and there's a lot that's crazy right now," he said. "It will all be waiting for you in two hours after the show. Right here, right now, there's only us."

Also in the interest of staying in-the-moment, the band disallowed cell phone/camera usage in the arena and had extra security staffers trolling the aisles looking for any lit-up screens. Never mind all the joints and one-hitters that were being lit.

After a few more older favorites, including "The Pot" and "Pushit" — the latter opened up the air-drumming floodgates in the crowd — the band leaned into the new songs in the second half. Even by Tool's standard of stretching songs out 10 minutes or longer, "Descending" dragged on tiringly. However, the 13-minute "Invincible" made for a riveting finale.

There was still a degree of sameness to Sunday's show, for better or worse. The giant video backdrop behind the stage showed the usual array of creepy cave-dweller-type creatures and fiery Mount Doom landscapes.

Some of the "Fear Inoculum" tracks had a uniformity to them, too, like stand-ins for better-known older songs. "Pneuma," in particular, harked back to the 2001 favorite "Schism" with its noodling bass line and air-gasping climax. Why not just play "Schism"?

Of course, when your songs are longer than most dental cleanings, a lot of oldies have to hit the cutting floor. Only 12 songs made it into Sunday's setlist, including an encore with a loopy five-minute drum solo from Carey (speaking of optional time-saving edits).

Tool never really was a band centered around hits anyway. As its peculiar brand of dark-fantasy concerts go, this one still hit hard against all the darkness that Keenan alluded to outside the arena.

Sunday's setlist:
Fear Inoculum
Opiate
The Pot
Pushit
Pneuma
The Grudge
Undertow
Descending
Hooker With a Penis
(ENCORE) Chocolate Chip Trip
Culling Voices
Invincible