Tool bassist Justin Chancellor has spoken to NME about the pressure from fans to release new music, admitting that “it’s not the easiest thing to do”.
The LA band’s fifth and most recent album, ‘Fear Inoculum’, came out in 2019 – marking their first full-length project since 2006’s ‘10,000 Days’.
READ MORE: Tool talk touring and the timing of new material: “It definitely comes on our own terms”
However, Chancellor said earlier this year that there was “no thought of taking 13 years” to drop Tool’s sixth LP, and that they’d be heading back to the studio after their current UK and European tour.
He also explained that the group had already reunited for some writing sessions before they embarked on their North American tour in late 2023. “We gave it a stab for a couple of months,” the musician said in February.
During a recent interview with NME, Chancellor was asked about the current status of Tool’s new music, and whether he felt any pressure to deliver another album sooner rather than later.
“It definitely comes on our own terms,” he responded. “The only pressure comes when we announce that we’re working on something new, because then we have to make our own predictions for when it’ll come out, and obviously you feel like you let people down if you don’t release it in a certain amount of time.
“It’s a nice feeling that people still want new stuff, but also they’ve got to understand that it’s not the easiest thing to do. It’s not a simple thing and it’s not always a natural thing that comes at the time you want it to come. Art is a very strange animal and it has its own schedule.”
Chancellor continued: “When it comes to writing new music, we’re aware that people don’t manage to stay together for as long as we have, so the pure fact that we’ve made it this far makes us eager to take it to the next place and create something new. Whether we’ll be able to successfully, who knows?
“We’re pretty sure we can, but Tool’s approach has always been experimental, so we never quite know how it’ll come together.”
When asked why taking 13 years between records had worked for Tool last time around, Chancellor replied: “It was never an intention of ours to do it that way! As time went on it just took longer and longer, and I think that stems from the pressure of trying to excel and trying to outdo yourself.
“There’s always a danger of looking back and comparing ourselves to what we’ve done before, so there’s a certain amount of stuff we had to work through to get to the place where we could create something new and pure and of its own right. I think that’s the reason that the process started to take longer and longer.”
The musician went on to explain that Tool were “in and out of ideas a lot” when working on ‘Fear Inoculum’, adding: “We wrote a whole bunch of stuff, and then at one point we kind of threw it all away.
“We got a little frustrated a few times, and people needed to go off and do other things just to kind of get the breeze in their hair and get a fresh perspective. When you get stuck, sometimes you need to walk away.”
Tool. CREDIT: Travis Shinn
As for the reasons behind switching up their approach for LP6, Chancellor told NME that “getting old” and “the pressure of time” had played a part. “If we take 13 more years we’ll be touring when we’re over 70!” he said. “Now there’s more of a necessity to get something cooking a little faster if we want to keep going strong.”
Chancellor explained that Tool “can always carry on touring” but said the band were “all eager to create something new while we’re on the planet”. He continued: “We want to keep producing more and really explore the creative side of ourselves.
“We are happy with what we’ve done so far, but we are also excited to see what else we could create that would be different from all of that.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Chancellor had his say on bandmate Danny Carey’s past comments regarding a possible new EP from Tool instead of an album.
“Another idea is to release singles one at a time, then once they’re all once we’ve accumulated to the length of an album we’ll put that together in a package and release it as an album,” he told NME. “That way you could still have a physical vinyl and do all the artwork and all that stuff.
“I still think that by writing a whole album, you get really deep into the vibe of the piece and it turns into something further reaching and makes your work a little deeper. But for now, it’s pretty flexible, which is exciting.”
Chancellor concluded: “As soon as we’ve got something ready to go, there’s a choice of different outlets.”
You can see Tool’s remaining 2024 UK tour dates below, and find any remaining tickets here.
JUNE
01 – AO Arena, Manchester
03 – The O2, London
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