Tool released their first new album in 13 years Fear Inoculum in 2019. Which of course means that we're already chomping at the bit for some new Tool. Bassist Justin Chancellor recently said he was working on some bass riffs, while the always-optimistic drummer Danny Carey said he was hoping the band would knock out a new EP in quarantine.
Carey recently spoke to founding Skinny Puppy member cEvin Key and said Tool is still considering writing an EP. Carey adds the band is now without a label, which offers them more freedom to do whatever they want.
"Tool hasn't been jamming,"said Carey. "We've been just kind on hiatus. Nothing's really been happening. But I think it's time. We kept hoping that we were gonna get back out, so we were just kind of, 'Hey, enjoy this while it lasts,' but now it's looking like it could go to the rest of the year, so we need to get the lead out and start functioning — maybe knock out another EP, at least, or something like that. We've never really done that since our first release — done an EP — so I thought it would be kind of nice to do something like that. We don't have a record deal anymore — we're free agents — so we can kind of release whatever we wanna release now, which is a good feeling."
Carey also discussed Tool's writing process.
"It's a slow process for us to compose our tunes, 'cause we really don't have a songwriter, like a Neil Young or something like that. We just get in there and jam, and these jams can take off in all these different directions, and that's when we're all kind of pushing weirdness on each other. We always keep the tape rolling the whole time, so then we just find the cool bits and go, 'This would fit good with this.' We all take the tapes home and listen to 'em and then show up the next day and then have little meetings to talk about how it's gonna develop or what direction it can go. Sometimes different time signatures can feed into other ones. It's weird. It's always hard to kind of figure out how things fit together, but they do. It's almost like a commitment — if we're all feeling it, then we can make it fit together. It's definitely a band vibe that makes the songs come together in the end — all of us feeding into this pot. It's a good process, but I wouldn't recommend it to the faint of heart [laughs], 'cause it's time consuming. It takes us a long time to write. And it sounds like us in the end, so I'm happy about that."
