Tool has reached the front page again in music as they have really had a lot happen over the last few months. Just running through a few things that have happened have been: Danny Carey getting arrested, merch prices going way up, and James Maynard Keenan’s car being stolen. Surely, a big month for the entire band full of not so great things for them. Thankfully, other than that, the band has been doing great and ready to get back to where they feel the best at – making music for their fans.
The issue with making music for the band has been being able to do so at a good pace. Tool has always been slower to release material due to just how in depth their music goes from all sides. Fans don’t like waiting on the band though and with good reason. Tool’s latest record, 2019’s Fear Inoculum, was its first in 13 years.
In a recent interview, bassist Justin Chancellor spoke on all things Tool from their genre to what it was like to put together their last record. Justin said about the birth process of the last record: “It was grueling. We kept thinking we were getting somewhere, and then we scrapped all the songs. We never tried to rush it.” It’s unknown what Tool will do with the unreleased ‘scrapped’ Fear Inoculum songs.
The album would go on to get half and half reception from the fans of Tool, but overall, would fit nicely in their overall music library. Tool knew that there would be a bit of a disconnect with fans due to the length in time since the album that came before it. With ten songs at over an hour of run time, it seemed like a little and a lot all at once, but fans that really enjoyed Tool’s work also loved the last record as well.