"Tool's songs encompassed sullen calm, rapid-fire onslaughts, spacious chords and nimble-fingered counterpoint. Standing room sometimes became a mosh pit. But midway through its two-hour set, Tool chose stasis with a patiently tolling guitar vamp like a mantra. Its fastest music also had a ritual quality, pounding and repeating like drummers in a trance ceremony. Songs that rev up and end abruptly on Tool's albums only accelerated further, riffing harder and harder as if, through furious motion, they could somehow break through Tool's perpetual tension to reach a long-denied release."