Tool bassist Justin Chancellor offered an optimistic update on when the band might record a new album in an exclusive interview in the new issue of Metal Hammer. Addressing the 13 year gap between 2019's Fear Inoculum and 2006's 10,000 Days, Chancellor admitted the band couldn't afford to have such big gaps between releases.
"Danny [Carey, Tool drummer] is 62 now, so there’s no thought of taking 13 years if we’re gonna do it," he explains. "We’re gonna have to be more efficient, and we’ve been talking of ways that we can do that. Maybe taking a leaf out of how me and Peter [Mohamed, Justin’s bandmate in side project MTVoid] work with MTVoid – instead of staring at each other going ‘Come on! Get it out of ya!’ maybe we could do a bit more at home. We’ll see!"
Carey himself had admitted as much in 2019 when Fear Inoculum was released, stating the band had "tons of material" for a follow-up even at that point.
Chancellor then goes on to say that the band have begun writing sessions in earnest. "We put a little work in before this tour," he tells Hammer. "We gave it a stab for a couple of months. We ended up compiling all the ideas we had; normally when we do that we start writing pretty soon after, but we had a lot of stuff coming up, so we didn’t dive all the way in. When we’re done with Europe, we’re gonna dive back in during the second half of the year.”
This corroborates what he said in an interview with The Vinyl Guide podcast in October 2023, when he suggested the band had hoped to "bang it out and spend that time when [we're] not touring."
Of course, the band have plenty of tour dates keeping them busy at the start of 2024. As well as their on-going US tour - which began in Baltimore on January 11 and ends next week in Las Vegas - Tool are also set to cross the Atlantic for headline shows in Europe and the UK in May and June, ending in Norway on June 27.
To see the full list of upcoming Tool tourdates, visit the band's official website. Read the full interview with Justin Chancellor talking MTVoid, Tool and knocking Taylor Swift off the top of the charts in the new issue of Metal Hammer, out now.
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