By Scott McLennan

Wading in the deep end of the Tool pool.

Tool’s Maynard James Keenan at the TD Garden. Photo: Sam McLennan

Tool brought its Fear Inoculum tour back to the TD Garden on Saturday. On the surface, it looked very much like the show the band delivered in 2019, but this was a performance on a whole other level.

The song selections had the group digging deeper into its catalog and, despite the touring hiatus caused by the pandemic, the quartet sounded more limber, assured, and adventurous.

This was peak Tool, an experience set at the nexus of rock spectacle and thoughtful contemplation. Singer Maynard James Keenan fused Ram Dass and Robert Plant into a singular persona of his own for a marathon performance that felt as if you were witnessing one man’s self-reflective journey through a hostile and turbulent landscape. Keenan created that sense of sole (soul?) seeker by typically lurking in the shadows on stage, seemingly digging into his own head (fitted with a spiky punk Mohawk wig), almost oblivious to the nearly 20,000 onlookers hanging on to every word.

The rest of the band — guitarist Adam Jones, drummer Danny Carey, and bassist Justin Chancellor — was likewise impressive, crafting the huge swells and intricate lattices of music that set the mood from song to song as well as generating the galvanizing dynamic shifts within the tunes themselves. Tool has forged a distinct musical personality by bridging psychedelia and heavy metal, a combination that has fueled its artistic growth.

Tool’s Adam Jones at the TD Garden. Photo: Sam McLennan

Newer material from 2019’s Fear Inoculum encouraged Tool to go off on long, tiered excursions. That album’s title track opened the show, as it did last time Tool performed in Boston. Yet this time lyrics that mused on a spreading contagion took on a much more significant meaning. The words are much sharper now than when the record was released: they were first taken as a metaphor for widening cultural and political divides.

Tool has been around since 1990, and part of its longevity can be attributed to how well its material ages. After the long, engaging sprawl of “Fear Inoculum,” the band moved into a batch of older songs, starting with “Opiate” from its 1992 debut recording. This tirade on the dangers posed by charismatic leaders has grown from pertinent social commentary to prophetic (if ironic) reflection, given that Tool itself commands a sizable, fervent following.

“The Pot” and “Pushit” followed. The former featured an explosive ensemble jam that made for a gripping repeat performance of the 10,000 Days album track which was played at the 2019 show.

“Pushit” dove deeply into the murky waters of 1996’s Aenima record, yielding particularly inspired playing from Jones, and an intoxicating visual display made for a more palpable jolt — visually and musically —  than the safer routes that the band took through Aenima the last time in town.

After “Pushit,” the translucent screen Tool was playing behind — filled with vivid, hallucinatory imagery that literally enveloped the band — spread dramatically open to reveal the musicians. (The art-grunge opening band, The Acid Helps, had a few lava lamps on stage while it played. Tool made it seem as if it was playing inside a lava lamp.)

Tool’s Justin Chancellor at the TD Garden. Photo: Sam McLennan

The onslaught of visual stimulation didn’t taper, however. The optics helped accentuate the lighter touches of “Pneuma” (during which lasers abound) and underscored the angry pummeling of “The Grudge,” another of the older selections that went deeper than the “hits” from its home album, Lateralus.

Staying in the deep end of the Tool pool, “Right in Two” came next, propelled by Carey’s insistent, complex groove. Then we got a new offering from Fear Inoculum, the textured epic “Descending” that generated a stunning jam among Jones, Carey, and Chancellor. Keenan left the stage to let the rest of the band go at it.

MJK returned in style, however, to deliver a scorching oldie, “Hooker With a Penis,” a song that initially (back in 1997) addressed the idea that this band was “selling out” its artistic credibility for the sake of commercial success. On this night, 25 years into that debate, the song hit with an all-too convincing scabby fury. Tool made its case that mass appeal and provocation — the kind that does not spare paying audiences from looking into some damning mirrors — do not need to be mutually exclusive.

The band took a 12-minute break, timed out with a countdown clock over the stage, before the encores, which kicked off with a masterful drum solo by Carey based on the Fear Inoculum track “Chocolate Chip Trip.”

Tool’s Danny Carey at the TD Garden. Photo: Sam McLennan

Then the four members of the band took seats at the front of the stage, with Adams and Carey (yes, the drummer) playing guitar and Chancellor bass as Keenan crooned the opening to Fear Inoculum‘s tune “Culling Voices.” Glittery confetti fell from the ceiling as Keenan sang about psychopathy. The band eventually reconfigured to its regular, full-industrial-strength self of crashing drums, crackling, sculpted guitar lines, and undulating bass riffs to fully push across the song’s sense of coming undone.

Tool ended on the new song “Invincible,” of which much has been made about its references to the warrior struggling to stay relevant.

From the release of Fear Inoculum in 2019, 13 years after its predecessor 10,000 Days, through the first run of shows behind the record, Tool appears to have figured out how to be “grown up” rock stars without giving up any of the compelling showmanship that supports the music and its undeniable gravitas.

Keenan addressed the point head on when he commented toward the end of the show, “I’m 57 thinking I’m 47 pretending to be 27.”

However you frame it Maynard, Tool has yet to get old.

Scott McLennan covered music for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from 1993 to 2008. He then contributed music reviews and features to the Boston Globe, Providence Journal, Portland Press Herald, and WGBH, as well as to the Arts Fuse. He also operated the NE Metal blog to provide in-depth coverage of the region’s heavy metal scene.