By Allison Mizzone

12 years ago, in 2006, Tool released “10,000 days”, a riveting and powerful album. It was similar in sound to their previous release of “Lateralus”, but nevertheless contained an explosive opening track, “Vicarious”. Featuring other emotional and powerful songs, such as “Wings for Marie (Pt.1)” and “Rosetta Stoned”, fans probably didn’t realize at the time that this would be the last of new Tool content for over a decade.

Tool fans patiently (or perhaps more accurately, impatiently) waited for the next album to drop, but, unfortunately for them, the band members are known for being meticulous with their music before releasing it. Back in 2007, the band also was facing a multi-faceted lawsuit, involving associates, the insurance company, and the band, which took away a lot of their focus. Even after that issue was resolved, the band members were still working on their music, writing and rewriting songs, as noted by Maynard James Keenan in 2017. At the start of 2018, there were comments from Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine that the music was almost done, and Keenan just had to record his vocals. The promising outlook only grew larger: also, at the start of 2018, drummer Danny Carey said on a podcast that the album will be out in 2018. So when Google sent out an alert to fans in July that a new Tool album was released, only to see it was just a mix up and the album was just from a SoundCloud rapper instead, fans were disappointed to say the least.

As the months of 2018 dwindled down, fans began to wonder when we would get the long-awaited album. And then, Keenan tweeted an update on the album accompanied by #TOOL and #2019. With 2019 only a few months away, we have a lot to look forward to and hopefully the wait is worth it. Of course, there’s always a chance this album might not be what we want, but I have a feeling that Tool won’t let us down. Hopefully, we get some new sounds from them, but not too new that they stray from their core progressive metal sound. With all this time to work and the natural genius of Tool, I’m sure this album will be nothing short of another masterpiece.