Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Tool
Label: Sony BMG
Release: 2006
Rating: 5/5
After yet another very long break, the kind we’ve gotten used to with Tool, they’ve finally put out an album this year called 10.000 Days. The latest in the series, and no less wrapped in a haze of mystical secrecy, comes with its own stories again. After all the speculation about the title (one of the possible names rumored around was Teleincision), five years after Lateralus a new vignette of the Tool-tinted world unfolds before us, where heaven and earth are once again stretched out on crystal-clear guitar riffs, and Maynard’s vocals sound a little different, but no less seductive. The first impression comes from the album sleeve itself, a specially made optical gadget that lets you look at the artwork in a slightly different way. I won’t tell you anything more than that, other than that it’s worth trying out. Musically, though, the first impression isn’t all that fascinating for many listeners, but by the second or third listen the epic-sounding (and suitably long) instrumentals, whose sonic character the band shaped entirely on their own, hit us like a force of nature. The record isn’t just a step forward in the development of the Tool idea; in its effort to keep its epic status, it also allows itself to dip into the treasure chest of early heavy metal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQRS1Ryh9HU
The opening song ‘Viscarious’ serves up the kind of direct lyrics that were last this clear on ‘Hooker With A Penis’ from the album Ænima. At its core, Maynard condenses a direct critique of reality shows, points to the problem of the flood of information we’re exposed to every day, and the visual stimuli that enslave us as we give up our own lives to live a life on the other side of the screen. That’s just one fleeting flash among many that keep coming on the record. Stunned by an honesty we rarely get on records, we’re taken completely by surprise to the song ‘Wings For Marie/ 10.000 Days’, an ode, a dedication to Maynard’s late mother. She died during the break between Lateralus and the new record. She succumbed to the effects of a battle with paralysis that followed a stroke twenty-seven years ago. It’s really a kind of voyeurism, listening to family trauma on a record, but Maynard draws us into it with a feeling and honesty that has very little concern for where the line between melodrama and sincerity lies. By the standards of modern metal, most of the songs are too long for many people, even drawn out, but let’s remember: Tool aren’t just another one of those derivatives of the music scene. The musical know-how and the interplay of rhythm and melody, as Carey’s and Jones’s urges for sonic dominance collide, carry us along so naturally and unconsciously that the average six-minute length of each track makes complete sense, and any shorter form would chop up the whole. The moves are chosen so carefully that Tool, in drawing the final picture, practically can’t go astray. It’s a subtle meditation. A shamanic ritual of saying goodbye to those who have passed and announcing a new era of rebirth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2F_hGwD26g
The anger that fueled some of their biggest works has been replaced with calmer, more introspective moments, as they spin the links between one passage and the next. That doesn’t mean the anger is gone. It erupts in individual songs, but compared to their earlier output, they’ve grown past that stage. They picked new concepts that are worth exploring, and in their view necessary to explore. From the standpoint of fans of the earlier phase of Tool’s evolution, a new state of split, disappointment and schizophrenia has set in. You can fall for 10.000 Days instantly, or, thanks to its too mellow, A Perfect Circle-style approach, you can’t accept it as a fully Tool record. So you can love it or hate it. Either way, you can’t stay unaffected or untouched. Maybe, if you make peace with the idea that it’s enough to listen to the music only on the surface, you could even use it as a soundtrack for making hot sandwiches and drinking beer. If Tool used to be a band of hard-sounding, unpolished surrogate, the result of existential rage, they’ve now swapped that for different pastel shades. The old Tool is gone. But if you long for a Tool whose passion and introspection are finally rounded out with intense emotion, brutal honesty and musical maturity, then you’ll have a hard time finding a better metal album than the one 2006 has to offer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC9-b9m8s68
Lineup
Danny Carey – drums
Justin Chancellor – bass
Maynard James Keenan – vocals
Adam Jones – guitar
Production
Tool
Track list
1.Vicarious
2.Jambi
3.Wings For Marie (Pt. I)
4.10.000 Days (Wings Pt 2)
5.The Pot
6.Lipan Conjuring
7.Lost Keys (Blame Hoffmann)
8.Rosetta Stoned
9.Intension
10.Right In Two
11.Viginti Tres
ALBUM LENGTH: 75:50
