Tool Bassist Offers Update on New Album

Thank heavens for Bass Player Magazine, who’ve gotten perhaps the most substantial update on new Tool music we’ve heard in a very, very long time via an interview with bassist Justin Chancellor. (Remember those double-album rumors that circulated earlier this year? Yeah…)

“We’re pretty deep into the writing process now, and we’ve narrowed things down to big groups of ideas. For the past few months we’ve been working on one of the newer songs fairly exclusively. We get the gist of it and find the main themes that make up the skeleton between verses and choruses.

Then we explore different ways we can depart from that and come back to it and flip it upside down, and take the time to see what else is there. Everyone knows we take our time. We’re really trying to be responsible with ourselves in trying to discover ideas that haven’t been discovered before. It’s kind of an alchemy, how we experiment.”

That all sounds very Tool-like, doesn’t it?

Chancellor goes on talk about what the band’s writing process is like, why it takes them so long between albums (hint: it’s not staph infections), his own bass playing style, how he approaches writing Tool music and more. Read the full piece at Bass Player. Thanks to The PRP for bringing this to our attention.

Clearly no one’s in any rush here and, frankly, it’s a miracle that Tool can take the time to write and work on their craft professionally the way they can; few bands these days have that luxury. The flipside is that it’ll still be a long while before we fans get to hear any of the music the band is currently working on… I’d say a year, at least.

Meanwhile, entertain yourself with this video of a 40-piece orchestra playing “Schism,” because what the fuck else have we got to keep ourselves busy with?