Concert Review - Tool - Auckland - 22nd November 2025
Presented by Frontier Touring
Tool Live in Auckland - Photo Credit Megan Moss
Review By - Faith Hamblyn
Artist/Band - Tool Supported by Headsend
Venue/City - Spark Arena, Auckland, New Zealand
Date of Event: Saturday 22nd November 2025
Byron Bay three-piece Headsend are well named to support Tool – Bon, Kyuss and Rasmus. They performed in front of a Kubrick-red backdrop that was just a taste of what was to come. The first track, Stove, was pure ‘90s grunge; Rasmus vocals were similar to Kurt Cobain at his least comprehensible. The second track, Angel, was like a heavy version of Blur on speed. You can hear why they were tapped for the gig – fast, punchy, danceable rock with just enough self-loathing. ‘Someone’s smoking weed,’ said Rasmus, just as James Hetfield observed at Metallica this week. Another link between the gigs is wearing glowing crowns in the pit – combine this with Tool’s request to not use phones during the gig, and it’s evolution I can get behind. Final song Chugg was reminiscent of Silverchair, but that could have just been the Australian accent. With that, it was time, as Rasmus said it, for ‘Tewl.’
Roadies changed the stage into Tool Land, with coloured lights and a steampunk control panel behind a gigantic drum kit. A guitar tech checked a Flying V, and coloured strips flashed under the monitors. Groups of the audience provided entertainment by doing hand puppets like emu heads above the throng.
For the first time since 2020’s notorious Covid superspreader event, Tool walked on to a Kiwi stage. Maynard wore a spiky mohawk in silhouette against the gigantic rear screen, where eight wizened heads grew their third eyes behind thundering Danny Carey for opener The Grudge. With the unsettling, rhythmic visuals in place, Maynard greeted the crowd. ‘Sorry about the whole Covid thing. Stay with us tonight. Be present. Put your fucking phones away. Or I’m gonna give you Covid again.’ The second track was Fear Inoculum, and in context surely won’t help to dispel the speculation that the song predicted the pandemic.
The backdrop was as though we are all made of volcano, and then the horizon, and then everything. I don’t know how Adam Jones has access to what passes through my brain as I’m going to sleep, but he’s nailed the imagery. Tool’s disturbing visual imagery is often difficult to comprehend. Often you don’t know what you’re looking at, but you are pretty sure it’s alive, and it’s suffering. It can’t be overstated how simply enormous the rear screen was. The front surface of the riser platform was also one long, integrated screen, which sometimes made it appear as though Maynard and Danny were floating in space.
Rosetta Stoned had strobe spotlights and metal drumming, apocalyptic and with the visuals of Roswell aliens. From drugs in the desert, we were taken to the next logical place – outer space. Carey’s drumming marked it out as prog, with Maynard ranting with modulated vocals, periodically singing through a megaphone. Aliens with dubious intentions were washed blue, red and green, and the arena was filled with lasers. Bass fought vocals in the denouement of the song, with drums calling it a draw. The technical precision of the band is something to behold live, particularly the rhythm section. Justin Chancellor and Danny Carey play seemingly impossible polymetric time signature changes in such perfect staccato synchronicity it almost defies understanding – at least for those of us without a degree in advanced mathematics.
Disposition, off Lateralus, had footage of floating women’s bodies, a lull in the storm. Then Ænima’s H., the first of several songs Tool are known to rarely play live, drew a suitably oversized fan reaction – you might say the crowd could feel it coming over like a storm again, and the resounding ollective chorus of ‘I don’t mind!’ was darkly heartwarming. Here the backing visuals featured swirling stormy red graphics and ouroboroses eternally devouring their own tail. Rainbow-coloured whorls of projected laser pulsed on the suspended speaker stacks.
For Jambi Adam Jones played through a talk box in the solo. If that puts you in mind of Peter Frampton or Bon Jovi, you don’t know anything about Tool.
Throughout parts of Pneuma, the crowd and band were both bathed in pink light, perhaps emphasising that we are all bound to one flesh. Figures of women rose and fell like smoke made into ice. Maynard disappeared, and I thought maybe there was a door behind the stage, but it was a giant speaker and my liminal-lulled brain was playing tricks on me. Who can be sure, when there’s a giant beautiful kaleidoscope on screen?
Crawl Away, another crowd-pleasing treat which Tool have barely ever played live since the ‘90s, was met with cheering, and the response to Undertow’s Intolerance was thunderous. Danny threw drumsticks into the crowd at its end, and the band left the stage for a lengthy break. The stadium clapped rhythmically and did Mexican waves until a countdown was projected with five minutes till an encore. Even how Tool announce themselves coming back to the stage is cool.
At last Danny returned alone to the stage, in a Day-Glo science suit in traffic-light colours. After tinkering Pete-Townshend-on-ayahuasca-like with a customer modular synthesiser, picking up radio transmissions from other planets, he drummed us into space with a frantic but precise solo, all while displayed in stereo close-up on the enormous screen.
Next the band performed Black Sabbath’s Hand Of Doom in tribute to Ozzy, with Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers-style creepy plant footage. Maynard followed up this slice of heavy metal sci-fi by reminding the audience that using phones at a gig is rude and dumb, but finally giving permission to film the last song, Invincible, albeit with several enjoinders to ‘Turn your light off, dummy!’
‘See you tomorrow, bitches,’ he signed off, after some insanely loud guitar. The crowd delivered a standing ovation as the screen played footage that looked like molten hyperventilating oesophageal lava. In summary, Tool are like if Pink Floyd were metal and fucking ruled.
Setlist
The Grudge
Fear Inoculum
Rosetta Stoned
Disposition
H.
Jambi
Pneuma
Crawl Away
Vicarious
Intolerance
Encore
Chocolate Chip Trip
Hand of Doom (Black Sabbath cover)
Invincible
