Speakers
Jerry Cain
Jerry Cain is a lecturer on the Music Research Faculty at McGill University in Montréal, Québec, where he has taught courses in music history to music majors and non-majors since 2010. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music education from Appalachian State University, and master’s and doctoral degrees in historical musicology from Florida State University. His dissertation research focused on Anton Webern, but more recently his interests have gravitated strongly toward music-history pedagogy, in particular the study of propaganda and musical historiography, as well as both playing and researching rock music.
Unity in Tool’s Fear Inoculum
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Nicole Biamonte & Jerry Cain
The progressive rock/metal band Tool’s long-awaited fifth studio album Fear Inoculum(2019) consists of seven extended songs plus three interlude tracks, deriving from drummer Danny Carey’s original conception of the album as one long track. In interviews, the band has identified the number seven as a unifying theme of the album. This paper examines septuple structures in Fear Inoculum, going beyond the obvious—seven main tracks, numerous septuple grooves, seven-pointed star images, and orthography of “7empest”—to explore deeper-level septuple groupings of rhythm and form. This leads to a consideration of other unifying factors on the album: formal, tonal, motivic, and lyric relationships within and between the main multipart songs and connecting interludes, as well as process techniques and other aspects of minimalism.