Eddie Van Halen performs with Van Halen at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, Calif., on July 16, 2015. Derek Tobias/STAFF. Former members of two of my three favorite bands when I was 13 are talking about hitting the road without my favorite members of my old favorite bands,…

SACRAMENTO — Tool is an aberration in the modern music landscape. Every choice the L.A. band makes seems to counter conventional wisdom and trend. Many of the band’s songs cross the 10-minute mark with brooding instrumentals. A decade passed between albums. At concerts, enigmatic frontman Maynard James Keenan spends…

Tool, “Fear Inoculum.” Tool has a distinct advantage of desaturation. The band established a sound beyond duplication, released a handful of well-received albums, and then went silent for 13 years. Fiercely progressive yet entrancingly visceral, the quartet played by its own rules since day one—which apparently extends into its…