Schism Gave Tool Fans the Deep Cuts at Triple B
After Nine Inch Nails emptied the arena, Schism turned Triple B into an after-hours home for Tool fans still chasing the songs the real band rarely plays.
text Kris West
March 28, 2026
Images by Kris West / Spiral Out Network
March 7 in Las Vegas turned into a two-show night for people with no interest in going home early. Nine Inch Nails played MGM Grand Garden Arena, and when that crowd spilled out, Schism took over Backstage Bar & Billiards — Triple B — for a midnight after-show aimed straight at the same kind of obsessive music fans who still had gas left in the tank. That setup is the clever part of Schism’s whole operation. They do not just tour as a Tool tribute band. They slide into town after bigger shows and catch the crowd while the adrenaline is still burning. I had seen them do it before after Tool. This time it was right after Nine Inch Nails, and it made perfect sense.
Schism is Tool fans’ side chick, the after-hours affair that gives you all the things the real relationship stopped giving you. Tool is still the wife, the obsession, the one you built your life around. Schism is the Hooker with a Penis fantasy made real — loud, dirty, funny, and more than happy to hand fans the deep cuts and old favorites they are probably never getting from Tool again.
The current singer is a big part of why that works. Nick Serr does not fall into the usual tribute-band trap of trying to do a stiff Maynard karaoke impression. He approaches the material in his own way, rougher around the edges and more direct, and that actually helps. The songs still hit like Tool songs, but the performance has its own pulse. It is raw in the right way, and in a room like Triple B that kind of delivery feels better than a hollow imitation ever could.
Schism has been doing this for a long time, tracing its history back to 2001, and they play like it. These are not guys getting by on bald caps, projected visuals, and audience goodwill. They can actually handle the material. Every odd accent, every weird time-signature turn, every metallic little detail, every stop-start shift that makes Tool songs feel like machinery built by lunatics is there. Tool is not easy music to fake. Schism does not fake it. They get inside it.
That is what makes them more than a novelty. The real band still has the scale, the mystique, and the authority of being the real thing. It also has a modern live show that stays pretty tightly controlled. Schism comes at the catalog from the opposite direction. They play a grueling two and a half hours and spend that time digging into the songs Tool fans still talk about like unfinished business. The value is not just that Schism sounds close to Tool. The value is that they play the songs people still want.
That matters when a set includes songs like “Lateralus,” “H.,” “Part of Me,” “Bottom,” and “Third Eye.” Those are not casual picks for people looking to hear the radio version of Tool. Those are songs with history, songs fans carry around for years because they know there is a decent chance the real band is never going to hand them over again. Schism understands exactly where that ache lives. They build the night around it.
The crowd at Triple B was fully with them. This was not some half-distracted bar crowd staring into drinks and waiting for a familiar chorus. The room was packed with believers. Tool fans are wired a certain way, obsessive to the point of comedy until you are standing in the middle of them and realize that obsession is the culture. That energy transfers cleanly to Schism. They are not filling stadiums, but they are filling the rooms they are supposed to fill, and they are getting people to sing, shout, and lock into every ugly left turn those songs make.
What Schism understands better than most tribute bands is appetite. Tool fans do not just want accuracy. They want access. They want the longer set, the heavier pull from older material, the songs that have slipped out of sight, the sense that somebody onstage still remembers the deeper corners of the catalog and treats them like they matter. That is the lane Schism owns, and on March 7 they owned it in a packed downtown room full of people who knew exactly why they were there.
After Nine Inch Nails finished across town, Schism gave Tool fans the part they usually do not get: the extra set, the deep cuts, the after-midnight version of the relationship. That is why the band works. It is not parody. It is not cosplay. It is a well-played, well-timed, fully self-aware answer to a real hunger inside this fanbase. For the people packed into Triple B that night, Schism was not a backup plan. Schism was the plan after the plan.
Tags: Schism, Tool tribute, Triple B, Backstage Bar & Billiards, Las Vegas, Nine Inch Nails, live review, Tool fans, Spiral Out Network
Website: www.spiraloutpodcast.com
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