Tool at Verizon Center: Music in a Harsh Light

Tool's performance at Verizon Center on Saturday validates the Stockholm Syndrome. The quartet bludgeoned the crowd for two hours with a set of tunes that were uniformly complex, profane and heavier than the cast of "The Biggest Loser." What little interplay the band had with fans was disdainful -- "Pittsburgh was louder" was among the insults hurled by singer Maynard James Keenan -- and there were no niceties.

Yet the more painful the experience became for the captive audience, the more worshipful the response.

There really isn't another arena act like Tool. The band has toured and recorded only infrequently since its founding in the early '90s -- its most recent CD, "10,000 Days," is just its fourth full-length disc, and the first in five years. Tool's songs have never been really rock or anything close to pop, and don't get airplay. A typical number borrows arrangements from '70s art rock, full of time changes and what used to be known as "movements" in the genre. But, unlike vintage prog, melody isn't a key component of a Tool song. The main riffs of "Schism," "Rosetta Stoned" and the new record's title track were delivered over the same sort of bass-heavy drone favored by industrial artists. Most of the seven-minutes-or-so offerings came off as Yes meets Marilyn Manson.

Keenan, a very fit and menacing frontman, sported an ensemble of jeans, boots and no shirt, accessorized by a big belt buckle and tiny dark sunglasses topped off with a Mohawk coif -- the look Travis Bickle owned in "Taxi Driver." He spent the entire show at the back of the stage by the drum riser -- as far from the audience as possible -- rocking back and forth and flailing his arms as if he were riding an invisible mechanical bull.

Mostly male fans of all ages came to the arena dressed in black T-shirts, having memorized every time change and pummeling riff. There are payoffs to such memorization. The Los Angeles-as-Gomorrah tune "Aenima," which closed the set, contained several climactic passages that triggered the in-crowd to thrust their fists toward the stage and scream. Even for those unfamiliar with the material, this was fantastic theater.

-- Dave McKenna