Tool starts work on first album in four years

Tool

In an email newsletter to fans, Tool has announced that it has entered back into the studio and begun writing songs for its fifth full-length, to be the band's first album since 2006's "10,000 Days."

In an introduction to what ends up being a very lengthy (but funny) missive:

Members of the band are still in the process of writing new material (three days a week), and with the latest leg of the “Puscifer” tour nearing completion, it shouldn’t be long before the dry-erase board is filled with a bewildering array of color-coded intros, progressions, agitatos, con sordinos, crescendos, diatonics, inversions, resolutions, transitions, variations, obbligatos, consonance, and endings – the arrangements that millions will attempt to down-load off the internet.

Maynard James Keenan and Co. then go on describe magical spells which fans are invited to cast in order to:

• To get (Tool) to compose faster, and, hence, produce a new album quicker than previous recordings
• To sit next to Danny and Adam at a Lakers’ play-off game and win two free tacos from Jack In The Box afterwards (works also with sitting next to Justin at a Chelsea football match)
• To have (Tool) open for Pink Floyd at the Royal Albert Hall, or for Rush somewhere (Neuschwabenland?), or with King Crimson at Madison Square Garden, or to perform with “Muse” on a rooftop in Teignmouth, Devon

And so forth. The spell recipes call for various ingredients, such as Campbell's Cream of Caterpiller soup, "Wonder Bread laden with unreal blue butterfly eyes" and various talismans (talismen?).

Meanwhile, Maynard has just finished a tour with his other project Puscifer and is promoting screenings of his documentary film "Blood Into Wine," which focuses on his vineyard in Northern Arizona. See, another instance of wine meeting rock!

Katie Hasty
Managing Editor

• Follow

After five years as a columnist and editor at Billboard, Katie Hasty joined HitFix in 2009 for music and film reporting out of New York. The Midwest native has worked as a writer, music promoter and in A&R since 1999 and performs with her band Numbers And Letters.