Tool gears up: band to spend spring crafting new material

Over the past year or two, fans have gained some hope that they won’t have to endure another 13-year hiatus from the renowned alternative metal band, Tool, as their fan base collectively enters a six-year wait for more new music. Justin Chancellor, the bassist for the group, has reportedly been at the forefront of getting his fellow musicians back in the studio, or at the very least, the most outspoken about it to the media. By disclosing that the band had hard disks full of song ideas and that composition sessions for new material had already begun, Chancellor stoked hopes of some forward momentum in May 2024. Chancellor has recently expressed that, due to the group’s increasing age, they no longer have the luxury of resting on their laurels. As 2024 progressed and some band members were spotted on tour, expectations that new music would be released shortly started to fade. With the group now scheduled to embark on their first-ever Latin American tour this spring, this outlook has persisted throughout the year. A Perfect Circle and Puscifer will be on the road shortly after. So then the ensemble returns from Latin America; Chancellor and most of his bandmates plan to spend almost three months writing new music, he disclosed in a recent interview with Summa Inferno.

When we get back from the trip — I think it’s only three weeks we’re gonna be — but we have already shared with each other a lot of these new ideas, but when we get back, we’re actually gonna dedicate the next three months after that in the studio to organizing our ideas. There’s a lot of stages in the process. And much of it is just every day — we all have ideas and when they’re good, when we like them, we kind of save them or memorize them. But then the really difficult process is when you actually get together and make decisions about how it’s going to end up. And that becomes a little more mathematical, a little more like in the classroom — there’s a blackboard and there’s numbers and you have to make decisions. So that’s the stage we haven’t completely pulled off yet, but we’re committed to do that when we get back. Before the summer, we’re gonna spend those few months really organizing our ideas. We already know what we like. We’ve all shared our individual ideas with each other, and we have a really good pile of stuff. You have to make those decisions, and you have to kind of wrestle with each other a bit to get to that next stage. And then you have to record it, which is a whole another thing as well. You go into the studio, and you have to — it’s like a pregnancy almost. When you go to the studio, you have to make this final decision of how it’s gonna sound and how you’re gonna play it, and it’s gonna live like that forever. So it’s a real delicate thing to be able to pull off. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable that we take a long time at all. I think that’s only natural, and that’s why I’m proud of it, because it was worked on really hard.

Still, it’s going to take some time for us to get new material.

Yeah, well, the other thing is the climate of releasing music has completely changed, especially when you take a long time to make new music. It’s always a bit different when it comes out. So, we’ve talked about releasing a single, just one song— we could do that. We could also release an EP. And I think because we have such a dedicated fan base, everyone’s gonna be up for it. They’ll all be interested, whatever the way it comes out. So we might not necessarily have to really wrestle out a whole album. We talked about the option of just maybe doing it a little differently and doing a song at a time. Or you could release a single and then another single, another single, and then after a year of releasing singles, you could put them all together on a record and make that an album. I’m not really answering your question fully, but it doesn’t really have any rules when you’re making music. We’re just kind of making it up. But I can tell you that we absolutely have to write new music to continue doing what we’re doing. We wouldn’t be happy just to just sit on our laurels and play the same stuff over and over again. We really want to create new music to be able to continue doing what we love. So it’s coming. Trust me.

At least they don’t feel any pressure.

Um, not really. It’s more of a pressure on ourselves to be proud of what we allow to go out into the world. And part of that is really working hard on it and creating something that you’re proud of, not kind of being flippant about it, really taking it seriously as an art form. So the pressure really is on ourselves, I would say. And as far as everyone else, you can’t really please everyone. So, there’s always going to be people that don’t like it, and there’s gonna be people that do like it. There’s songs that I don’t like that Adam likes. And then sometimes that changes over time. There’ll be a song that I don’t like playing, but then, all of a sudden or over time, I start to be fond of it and see the beauty in it. It’s art. Each to their own. And if you try to please everybody, it’s not gonna work. So you really just have to be true to yourself.