Tool performs during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento on Oct. 6, 2023. SACRAMENTO — Business picked up substantially at Discovery Park for the sold-out second day of Aftershock Festival. The crowds were bigger, the acts’ productions were more ambitious—and the sweltering heat had no intention of leaving.…

Tool performs at Chase Center in San Francisco on Jan. 16, 2022. Nathan McKinley/STAFF. SAN FRANCISCO — The slow-burn evolution of the opening song by Tool Sunday night at Chase Center was in some ways a microcosm of the band’s full set. “Fear Inoculum” opens with a single repeating percussion…

To fully recognize Danny Elfman‘s expansive CV would take up the rest of the word count of this review. The singer, songwriter and composer began his career in the early ’70s with Oingo Boingo and branched out into scoring films, penning television theme songs and composing for live concert…

Bill Graham Civic Auditorium is shuttered on March 12, 2020. Photo: Another Planet Entertainment/Instagram. Another Planet Entertainment, which produces shows at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, the Independent, Fox Theater and other venues, has partnered with a nonprofit to feed Bay Area entertainment industry workers in need. The nonprofit, Touring…

Puscifer, Courtesy: Travis Shinn The shroud of mystery surrounding experimental rock outfit Puscifer is fitting for the uncertain and unsettling times of a pandemic crossed with mass civil unrest. The band, whose core is made up of Maynard James Keenan (Tool, A Perfect Circle), Carina Round and Mat Mitchell,…

Clockwise from top left: Aurora, Billy Strings, Honeyblood, Bon Iver, Sum-41, Tool, Opeth, 100 gecs, Subhumans and Lizzo. Welcome back to RIFF’s year-end album roundup! If you’re joining us just now, start with part one. Our album review staff is pretty musically diverse, which might explain why Opeth, Bon…

Tool performs at the Aftershock Festival on Oct. 13, 2019. Courtesy of Aftershock. SACRAMENTO — Northern California’s annual hard rock festival, Aftershock, continued its upward trajectory as one of the premiere national events for heavy music. What began back in 2012 as a one-day and one-stage event has ballooned…

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…

Radiohead. STAFF file photo. Usually this column is the top five songs of each year. Sometimes, in an especially good year, I bend that and make it the top 10. This week has nine. The reasons for this are threefold: First, the longlist has 23 songs on it and…