What do you do if it’s Sunday and you’ve just spent a couple of days baking off in the heat of 102-degree desert listening to rock music? For some at least, you go home, fearing work the next day. Yes, while still a monstrous crowd, it appears AC/DC was the biggest draw for this weekend’s festival, as the crowd felt a little less bursting at the seems today. Tool is the most artistic and counter culture of this weekend’s hard rock and metal offerings. For the uninitiated, Tool are like the Chinatown of art metal. Their contributions are unarguable, but their music demands patience, curiosity and forward thinking. The further they have gone in their career, the more prog metal their sound has become, with longer and longer songs, built on unusual time signatures and serpentine, undulating melodies and rhythms.

In a crowd seemingly keen on straight-ahead arena rock, the elongated nature of Tool’s material is a challenge for those craving instant gratification. Opening with “Jambi” off their 2006 widely successful album 10,000 Days, that rumination on wishful thinking led into the set’s most straight number, “The Pot.” From there, things went into a bevy of the band’s mega compositions. The super angular title track from Fear Inoculum led into the alien abductee fever dream of “Rosetta Stoned.” The band went for an even longer, more patient song with the follow up, Aenema’s second longest song “Pushit.”

Reasonable people can differ, but perhaps their strongest song pound for pound came next, the “Stairway to Heaven”-esque tribute to personal evolution “Forty Six and Two.” It’s worth pointing out, “Forty Six and Two,” has lost none of it’s emotional power more than twenty-five years since its debut. Another mutating and spiraling number “Pneuma” from their most recent album came next and possibly an even weightier song, the daunting and ominous “The Grudge,” off of 2001’s Lateralus. Leaning yet again into their most recent album Fear Inoculum, they went for contemplative next with “Invincible.” It’s always understandable that a band would want to lean into material that’s more recent and more in alignment with where they are now in terms of personal and professional growth, but this maybe was just one too many from the latest album.

They ended strong, completing their set with “Stinkfist” and the title track from their masterpiece Aenema bookending the only straight-ahead song from their career of the night, “Swamp Song” from 1993’s classic release Undertow. “Stinkfist” might be the best song where the lyrics literally (but most likely actually metaphorically) are about anal fisting. “Aenema” becomes the ultimate kiss-off, proclaiming a whole generation of Southern California residents worthy of tsunami and the grave (again, at least metaphorically speaking). And for all the incredible technical skill, there’s something acutely wonderful about hearing lead singer Maynard James Keenan howl “I hope it sucks / I hope it sucks you down,” on “Swamp Song.” As mentioned earlier, it’s a long way to take people for sixteen minutes of pure satisfaction. But there’s no questioning their prowess as players, Keenan along with guitarist Adam Jones, drummer Danny Carey and bassist Justin Chancellor might be the best four-person rock combo-at least debatably so—since the power combo of Bonham, Plant, Jones and Page. The big question here is whether you as the listener want to take the journey with them. If you do, the rewards are deep and plentiful.

Completing a jam packed weekend featuring five of the titans of rock music would be enviable task for any band, but if any heavy metal group conceivably could take a stab at it, it would be metal’s biggest breakout star, Metallica. Fresh from their giant stadium tour, entitled the M72 tour on account of their recent release 72 Seasons, the band played a sixteen-song set to headline the final night of the inaugural Power Trip festival. The M72 tour is an unusual one, as the band has been playing two nights in each city, each night featuring an almost entirely different setlist. This evening’s set was a pretty good explanation for why a band could justify doing two different shows in every place they play. The band has just too many good songs to fit into one show. Never mind the dynamics of having recent material that a group tries to cram into any show, Metallica is quickly approaching Frank Zappa levels of staggering catalog depth. And while they have played incredibly long shows before, is anyone really up for a four-hour show for any band?

The band used their station to frame up a stage show that makes evident their stadium drawing stature. They had a large catwalk encircling the main pit where members could move to that area where microphones and pedal boards were ready for them. Eventually even a second drum kit appeared for drummer Lars Ulrich to sit out in front and hammer on. In traditional Metallica fashion, they took to the stage with the sound system playing the legendary Ennio Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold” (if you’ve never seen go check out its usage in the finale of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly). They opened strongly, playing early career cuts “Whiplash,” “Creeping Death” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Kill ‘Em All cut “Whiplash” allowed lead singer/guitarist James Hetfield to howl in his signature bellowed shriek. “Creeping Death” was the very necessary freight train the band has always taken to playing early in the set. Bassist Robert Trujillo got to take center stage with bass distortion a la Cliff Burton’s original genius bass work on “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

Their biggest hit and easiest singalong “Enter Sandman” followed sounding as fresh and raw as it did when it hit the airwaves back in 1991. The set’s only songs from 72 Seasons “Lux Aeterna” and “Too Far Gone?” came next, and it may have been something about the mix of the show, but the songs sounded badly out of place amidst the rest of the show’s strong material. Trujillo introduced the next song indicating it was a short two-minute one that him and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett had written literally this very day. Calling it “Funk in the Desert” the song was an offbeat and very bass heavy number but it was specially made just for the Power Trip attendees. That quirky moment was followed by perhaps the band’s weightiest number, Ride the Lightning’s “Fade to Black,” a longing struggle for happiness set against an inevitable call of suicide. The tempo went back to rollicking fun—with a heaping helping of fireball pyro from the stage—for Reload’s “Fuel.”

Trujillo again had a great moment recreating more of former late member Cliff Burton’s brilliant basslines from fan-favorite instrumental “Orion.” This highlighted one of the set’s few real problems. Something was wrong with the mix. Call it a problem of balancing aural elements across a speaker array designed to emit sound to areas of the crowd literally miles apart, the guitars sounded more smudged than the traditional Mesa Boogie metal crunch the band is known for and Trujillo’s bass was higher in the mix than it should be.

“Sad But True” came forth later proving to be one of their absolute best and most credible singles. After “The Day That Never Comes” and “Hardwired” they brought the set home sans encores, ending with fan favorite “Seek & Destroy,” their anti war anthem “One” and the entirety of the title track from third album masterpiece, Master of Puppets. “Seek & Destroy” is the singalong the fans badly needed. It’s worth taking a second to note how drummer/founding member Lars Ulrich doesn’t get enough credit for how fantastic a drummer and performer he is. From almost anywhere in the Empire Polo Field where you could actually see him, it’s big fun watching him lead the band and feed off of every moment of each song. He has the charisma of one of rock’s great frontmen, a feat rarely observed in a drummer.

Everything ended on time and the fans left quickly, speeding to the parking lot hoping to avoid being stuck in traffic heading home. If you have work in the morning, we feel for you, getting home at three or four a.m. and having to be up for work the next day is no fun. All in all, Power Trip was a wild experiment in putting together a specialty bill of the biggest or best that hard rock / metal has to offer. There was a little bit here for everyone that appreciates guitar-driven rock, but there’s also an unmistakable sense that these are the greats of the last couple of generations. Even James Hetfield quipped at one point how he was sixty years old and deaf. It’s amazing to see something like this even happen, but what does this look like ten years from now? Will these bands even be possible at that point? As wonderful as it all was, it’s hard not to feel like this event was special in that it might be the last time seeing these bands like this, in top form, would truly be possible.

Setlist:

Tool:
Jambi
The Pot
Fear Inoculum
Rosetta Stoned
Pushit
Forty Six & 2
Pneuma
The Grudge
Invincible
Stinkfist
Swamp Song
Ænema

Metallica:
Whiplash
Creeping Death
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Enter Sandman
Lux Æterna
Too Far Gone?
Funk in the Desert (first time ever, composed that day)
Fade to Black
Fuel
Orion
Nothing Else Matters
Sad but True
The Day That Never Comes
Hardwired
Seek & Destroy
One
Master of Puppets

All photos by Raymond Flotat