Check the date. It’s Friday, 29th April and do you know what that means? It means it’s officially been 10 whole years since Tool released an album. Yes, it was on this date an entire decade ago that Tool released 10,000 Days and we’ve been waiting for a follow-up ever since.
It’s not like Tool don’t have enough good music to keep us happy in the meantime. We still love 10,000 Days and for that matter Lateralus, Ænima, and Undertow, it’s just… it’s been 10 freaking years already!
Sure, we haven’t been waiting as long as Guns N’ Roses fans did for Chinese Democracy, but everyone was pretty sure that album was going to suck (it didn’t, really, but we didn’t get our hopes up). Tool, on the other hand, have a pretty solid track record.
At the moment, all we know about the new Tool album is that the band are working on it. Guitarist Adam Jones told Rolling Stone back in November that the band’s writing sessions have been “wonderful”, although it doesn’t look as though recording has commenced.
“Things are really flowing and going really well, and I’m just blown away at the stuff that’s coming together,” said Jones. “I’m excited and can’t wait for it to be done. It’s something I’ve been missing for a long time [laughs], that beautiful collaboration that we have because we’re all so different and have different tastes.”
Jones had previously revealed that a convoluted court case had delayed work on the album. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Jones claimed an insurance company the band thought would protect them from lawsuits turned around and sued them in the midst of another pending suit.
Better to laugh than cry.
“The whole thing is really depressing,” said drummer Danny Carey. “The bad thing is it’s really time-consuming. As we’ve gotten older and our priorities have changed, it’s hard to get the band on a good, solid schedule as it is.”
“People have kids now. And there’s lots of other things that pop up. To throw this into the mix makes everything that much worse and stresses people out.” Jones added: “And it’s costing millions and millions and millions of dollars to defend us.”
“And the fans are all going, ‘We want a new Tool album. What the fuck?’ And you don’t want to pull people into your problems, because they don’t understand. But the point is, we’re fighting the good fight.”
But with the court case seemingly resolved, the band and those close to them have been teasing fans with updates, such as when Jones took to Instagram to share a photo of a whiteboard with what was apparently the arrangement for a new Tool song.
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That song may or may not have been ‘Descending’, a largely instrumental jam the band played during their headline set at the Monster Mash Music Festival in Tempe, Arizona back in November. It’s not yet clear if ‘Descending’ will appear on Tool’s next album, but it’s the first taste of new music since 10,000 Days.
The last we heard, Tool have been in the studio with Guns N’ Roses alum Chris Pitman, working on… we don’t know. It could have been a recording session for the next Tool album, it may have just been a rehearsal or a writing session, it may have been a meeting of the Illuminati, we just don’t know.
Here’s hoping we don’t have to spend too much longer not knowing.
