Fear Inoculum

Fear Inoculum arrived thirteen years after 10,000 Days. While Adam Jones, Justin Chancellor and Danny Carey wrote at the band's loft, a lawsuit over artwork and a related fight with the band's insurer dragged on, and Maynard James Keenan released records with Puscifer and A Perfect Circle. Recording began in March 2018 on analog tape with Joe Barresi, the engineer of 10,000 Days; the drums were done by May. Keenan cut most of his vocals at his home studio in Arizona, fitting the sessions around the grape harvest. The band produced the album, and Bob Ludwig mastered it. Six of the seven pieces on the CD run past ten minutes, and the disc lasts just over 79 minutes. Jones said many riffs he and Chancellor brought in were in seven, that Keenan had a concept of his own around the number, and that the artist Alex Grey had the same idea, to be expressed through video. The band described the theme as growing older and wiser, and more comfortable with oneself. The digital edition adds three short pieces, "Litanie contre la Peur", "Legion Inoculant" and "Mockingbeat"; Carey said such segues give band and listener an intermission between the long songs. Released on 7 August 2019, the title track entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 93, the first song over ten minutes ever to chart there. The album followed on 30 August through Tool Dissectional, Volcano Entertainment and RCA Records. Its only CD was a limited package conceived by Jones, with a four-inch HD screen showing the video "Recusant Ad Infinitum", a two-watt speaker and a 36-page booklet. It opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 270,000 units, displacing Taylor Swift's Lover for Tool's third straight No. 1, and also topped the charts in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. "7empest" won the Grammy for Best Metal Performance in January 2020, and the title track was nominated for Best Rock Song. After the CD sold out, an expanded book edition followed on 13 December 2019 (18 December in Japan), and the album reached vinyl in 2022.