Hopes for a somewhat expedient follow-up to Tool‘s gold-certified 2019 comeback album “Fear Inoculum” were buoyed tonight (August 13th). Justin Chancellor, who holds down the bass for the progressive alternative metal band, has perhaps been the most vocal member of the outfit about getting back in the studio to work on new songs.
Of course, after the glacial wait of 13 years that preceded “Fear Inoculum“, and the roughly four years that have passed since its arrival, there is a sizable contingent of fans who remain skeptical.
Still, speaking with Kerrang! this past spring, Chancellor remained committed to the band getting back together later this summer to hammer out what they hope will be the next entry in their catalog. As, Chancellor also revealed in that same interview, he and his bandmates aren’t coming to these potential sessions empty-handed. Chancellor was quoted as saying this past May:
“There’s absolutely tons and tons of hard drives full of stuff. Some ideas go back to before ‘Fear Inoculum‘ that are just simple riffs that we never incorporated into a song. But sometimes that’s a bit like grinding the gears when you’re trying to resurrect or revisit them, so it’s really appealing to work on the newest stuff.
Each time we come together, people also have so many new ideas and then we’ll spend all day playing them. We’re constantly introducing new stuff but then sometimes that’ll marry with the old material. We’ve been writing for the last couple of weeks, meeting a couple of times each week – we’ve had some really good sessions, and a lot of it has been brand new. We already have a couple of solid, what I would say are, skeletons of songs waiting to be finalized.”
The cause for excitement tonight was spurred by the below post Chancellor shared on social media of two his instruments with the caption “Vacation is over…” This would seemingly fall in line with a timetable previously expressed by Chancellor earlier in the year, in which he told Metal Hammer, “When we’re done with Europe, we’re gonna dive back in during the second half of the year.” Tool‘s European/UK touring concluded in late June.
Earlier this year, the group’s vocalist Maynard James Keenan also seemed hopeful about the prospect of working on new music from not only Tool, but also A Perfect Circle and Puscifer. He told Revolver of his upcoming plans, “I’ve got three bands that need to write songs, so I’m going to be doing that.”
However, there is a proverbial wrench to be thrown in the works when it comes to the rest of the year being devoted solely to crafting the band’s next opus. Drummer Danny Carey has committed a significant chunk of his fall to touring alongside Adrian Belew, Tony Levin and Steve Vai as part of the ‘Beat Tour‘. That undertaking will find the aforementioned collective covering material from three past King Crimson releases, and will have Carey on the road from September 12th through to December 18th.
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