A few weeks ago, we reported on the new Tool album. Or rather, the fact that there isn’t one and probably won’t be for a while. And while it’s frustrating for the many Tool fans that have been waiting seven years for a follow-up to 10,000 Days, it’s even more frustrating for the band, who have been mired in lawsuits stemming from artwork that a friend of the band did. The band’s Adam Jones told Metal Hammer that the artist sued them for one fifth of the money they’d ever made, and it got complicated when the insurance companies they’d hired to protect them from lawsuits tried to back out. With the insurance companies suing them, it sounds like it’s not going to neatly resolve itself. However, Jones did go into some more details about what album #5 will sound like:
“We’re always on an experimental path. We never think about what worked on the last record or what’s good on the radio right now. It’s a selfish process, we just go in there with some riffs. We experiment and the riffs start to take a different path and over time, this riff from last week might go really well with this riff from two years ago. We piece stuff together, almost like a film soundtrack, you know? But I’ll tell you this – there’s a lot of stuff in 7/4. Breaking up 7 can sound like an even number to the listener even though it’s an odd number, that’s really exciting. Rosetta Stoned had some elements of that where we had a middle break and the end rhythm of 7 against 5. It kinda opens up a whole can of worms! There’s some really light stuff going on but there’s also a lot of heavy stuff in there too.”
Jones says as soon as the lawsuit is behind them, it will allow them to focus their full attention on the album. Sounds like it’s going to be a polyrhythmic one. You can read the full interview here.
