The huge smiles on their faces said it all: These fans wouldn't have traded their prized stubs to see Tool [ tickets ] at Oakland, CA's Paramount Theatre for anything.

That makes sense, given how hard it was to score tickets to the Thursday night (5/4) show. Talk about supply failing to meet demand. The 3,000-plus tickets for the show sold out in an absurd 12 minutes.

You can bet that some Ticketmaster execs have a few Tool [ tickets ] posters hanging up in their bedrooms. Scalpers, too. Resellers, the scourge of the live-music industry, were demanding--and getting--several hundred dollars for these tickets. The original price on the tickets, let's note for humorous effect, was $66.66.

$66.66? Damn. Is Tool metal, or what?

The band could have surely played, and likely sold out, a much larger venue. That's probably true any day of the week, given that the group boasts one of the most insanely rabid fan bases in the biz, but it's certainly true these days as Tool mania is nearing an all-time high.

The dark alt-metal quartet (vocalist Maynard James Keenan, guitarist Adam Jones, drummer Danny Carey and bassist Justin Chancellor) released its hugely anticipated new album, "10,000 Days," on Tuesday (5/2). It's not every day that the band puts out a new CD--heck, it's barely every decade. The new CD is the band's first since 2001's "Lateralus'' and only the fourth of its 17-year career. In contrast, Ryan Adams releases roughly that many CDs while waiting in line for a morning cup of coffee.

Tool made the wait seem well worth it in Oakland. The band's 12-song set featured five excellent new songs. The fans embraced each of these selections--especially the current single "Vicarious"--with nearly the same fervor that they did the old hits.

After the house lights dropped, and the crowd erupted in one single-minded blood-chilling howl, the band slowly cracked open its songbook with a spaced-out take on the new track "Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann)." Then, in a similar fashion to the transition found on "10,000 Days," that opener segued into the powerful 11-minute-anthem "Rosetta Stoned." It's in moments like this that the band really comes across as this generation's version of Pink Floyd.

Trading prog-rock for punishing rock, the group than locked onto the classic number "Stinkfist" (from 1996's "Aenema"). The crowd, of course, went nuts.

"Nuts," however, is a relative term when it comes to Tool fans. They are definitely crazy about their band, in a way that former "Rocky Horror Picture Show" participants and Phish "Phans" could understand. But they are also a relatively subdued, controlled and well-behaved bunch. Although Tool can produce some major metal moments, which at times recall the swirling energy of Rage Against the Machine, the crowd isn't there to mosh and cause trouble. The fans might miss something if they did those things--and they wouldn't dare do that.

Tool gave the fans every reason to pay attention as the foursome continued to mix old and new, pinballing through the worthy "10,000 Days"-cuts "The Pot" and "Jambi" as well as the old favorites "Forty Six and 2" and "Schism."

The set list was very similar to the band's Sunday (4/30) performance at Coachella. Keenan was once again in remarkably strong voice and was atypically talkative. He made a number of remarks about being in Oakland, saying that the city was "kind of like San Francisco, only better." He also played to the city's unique civic pride, which is tied up in a Raider-esque tough-guy image.

"I was going to barbecue, but someone stole the grill," he joked. "I was talking to a cop, was going to have him write something down, and I turned around and someone stole the cop. It's a [expletive] rough town!"

The band ended its main set with a three-song run through some of its best older songs--"The Patient" ("Lateralus"), "Sober" (1993's "Undertow") and "Lateralus." After taking a short break, during which the band simply sat on the stage and waited, Tool returned with a two-song encore of "Vicarious" and "Aenema."

Tool nailed those two songs and the huge smiles in the crowd spoke volumes: This was an experience that these fans wouldn't have traded for the world.