Vicarious

The tone here is colder and more sardonic than most Tool work — the guitar riff is almost mechanical in its repetition, a churning loop that feels deliberately numbing, mirroring its subject matter. Keenan is at his most theatrical, voice shifting between detached observation and barely contained contempt, dissecting the human appetite for witnessing suffering at a safe remove. The track doesn't condemn this impulse from a high moral platform so much as name it from within — Keenan admits complicity alongside everyone else, which makes the indictment land harder. Carey's drumming underpins the whole thing with tribal authority, the snare hits landing like pronouncements. The mid-section guitar work from Jones opens briefly into something more melodic before collapsing back into the grind. There's a quality of deliberate ugliness to the production that suits the subject: this is not beautiful music about an ugly world, it's music that has agreed to be ugly in order to be honest. You don't so much enjoy this track as submit to it. Best experienced when you're feeling genuinely cynical about collective human behavior and want the music to confirm rather than comfort.