Maynard James Keenan Offers Latest Update on the New Tool Album: “Nothing is Tracked Yet, Nothing is Completely Finished”
Great news, friends: when Tool bassist Justin Chancellor recently told The MetalSucks Podcast that the band’s new album was 90% done, it turns out he meant “done being written,” not “done” the way we all thought/hoped he meant. See? And you thought you might actually live to see the day when you were totally disappointed by this thing!
This according to Maynard James Keenan, who offered the following update on the album during a recent interview with The Joe Rogan Experience (via Metal Injection):
“My desire to move forward, go go go, get things done – I’m always butting heads with the guys in the band to get those things done, and it’s just not their process.
“It took me a while to go, ‘This is not personal, this is just the way that they have to do it. And I have to respect it, and I have to take my time and let them take their time.’
“I just check in, I come and I see what’s going on. ‘Hey Justin, send me the tracks, to see where we’re at. Is this thing done?’
“If this thing is done done done and I can start writing words and music on it, great, but I’ve had instances where I’ve started to write stuff, and by the time I actually got it around and back and actually listening and whatever, the song had gone in a completely different direction.
“So everything that was written melody-wise or lyric-wise was completely irrelevant now, and I have to start over.
“I mean, I can sit there in that room, and be with them in that room, but their process is so tedious and so ‘Rain Man,’ that I just can’t, I just start fucking folding in on myself.
“I’ll be right back, I’ve got to go take five years to plant a vineyard, because you’ll still be right where you were when I left. But it’s a great thing, what they’re doing is wonderful – I completely back what they’re doing. There’s no other way for them to do it. For me, I can move much more quickly if you will let me help you.
“I’ve written a few songs, in fact, I was involved in many of them, the ones that we’ve done, so we can do that. But I think this is what they need to do.
“I’m OK with it, you got to get a little friction in there, so I have to come in and puff my chest out a bit and be aggressive, ‘Let’s move it guys.’ That worked for a minute, and we definitely made traction, but if I were to do that every day, it would just become a part of the friction, more friction instead of getting anything done.”
He continued:
“In fairness, I should take my 10 years to write lyrics now, but I won’t do that, I’ll digest these things as quickly as I can and keep that moment, that freshness, of what my impressions are of the finished tracks, and we’ll start.
“Nothing is tracked yet, nothing is completely finished. There’s a couple songs that I think are finished now, I can start working on those, but nothing is actually recorded.”
I know we’ve joked that it might be 10,000 days before the band releases a follow-up to 10,000 Days, but now it’s starting to look like we might actually have to wait 10,000 days. In which case, we have roughly sixteen years left to go. NBD.
