Not that I'm that well connected but rumor has it there will be 11 tracks (some say a bonus hidden one as well) 2 of the tracks are instrumental sugues the rest are songs...Ranging from as trippy as Lateralus, as straightforward and just pure TOOL as AEnima and heavier than anything they have ever done....by far.

As noted by post 10, some pages from the Meshuggah playbook are said to be dominating this album as well. I'm looking forward to that.

I'm going out on a limb here because this rumor is still under heavy debate but supposedly there is a track called "Dynasty"...

If you were alive during the 80's (I was born in 1980) The songs title is a refernence to a show about wealthy Texans....The speculation is that the song is a vicious and quite direct indictment on the Bush family and their ties with shadey oil sheiks who have ties of their own to arab terrorists....Sort of a 6 degrees of seperation between our leader and the people who threw our own planes at us.

If I find out anything else from my semi-reliable source and internet rumor mill digging I'll post here or on another Tool thread.

# Mar 2, 2006 @ 3:14 PM ET | IP Logged

heh. This just in.

Tool are gearing up to return with their first new collection of material since 2001's gargantuan 'Lateralus'. Kerrang! was granted an exclusive listening session to the just-completed, as yet-untitled fourth album, which is due out May, and can reveal that anyone expecting the shadowy Californian quartet to have gone soft with age willl be sorely disappointed. True to form, Tools upcoming opus is a 77-minute prog-metal odyssey, packed with plenty of eight minute-plus twisted riff-a-thons, odd-tempo polyrhythms and the bands trademark, eerie interludes. Its also arguably their heaviest, most punishing material since their 1993 breakthrough album 'undertow'.
The upcoming 11-track album has certainly been the bands most laborious and challenging record to complete, taking a mammoth five years to write (some of the material stems from pre-lateralus sessions), during which keenan recorded and toured with his other band A perfect Circle.
Tool also spent five months, in the company of QOTSA/Melvins engineer Joe Barresi, in three different LA studios over autumn 2005 recording it.

"Weve all been listening to a lot of Meshuggah" admits guitrist Adam Jones. "I see a lot fo them in us and us in them, and they really have a very experimental prog side to them. I dont think it was like, 'Okay right here were going to play like Meshuggah', but more, 'Oh my god thats come out a messhugah moment'."

"We have the most retarted president weve ever had, and were frustrated and thats the reason its a little heavier this time" reveals drummer Danny Carey. "that level of frustration back like when we first got hte band together: we were products of that f***ing Reagan thing, we were p***ed off and bummed-out, we had that angst, and now its coming forth again: like it or not were products of our environment. Were p***ed off again"

No stranger to weaving social and political frustrations into his tortuously articulate lyrics, singer MJK who released the politically-motivated covers album, 'eMOTIVEe' with APC in 2004, has chosen another approach this time around.

"I think for me, and this is just personally, the last few years have really been crushing" Keenan confesses. "For me, as an artist, I needed to see on some level if speaking my mind would actually inspire people - you see the sky falling and you feel like youve got to say something. I think of prior tool albums 'AEnema' and 'Lateralus', lyrically, I had this idea of trying to share things and push some kind of higher purpose - enlightenment, this global consciousness thing - and everything thats going on nowadays has kind of left me a little disappointed, a little bummed.

"So I think on this album Ive talked more about my personal stuff, things that I needed to get off my chest," he adds. "Its a little cynical and its almost like coming from a sad place. Theres some hope in it, but its more back to rock and roll basics, just experessing some very big sadness thats from the gut."

"This is our blues record, were singing the blues!" Jokes Carey.

"The difference is before, we had that young spunk and we thought we could actually say something and help people realise these thigns, " continues Keenan. "But now, the anger is more of a frustrated anger, and me sitting back and going, 'Okay, im going to shut up now, Im going to stop ranting and trying to be chicken little telling you that the sky is falling, Im going to just let you guys get hit in the head'."

Tools as-yet-untitled album is due to hit shelves in May.

# Mar 2, 2006 @ 3:24 PM ET | IP Logged

A Perfect Circle is as it's name implies....The Emotive record was just a cobbled together piece of crap in order to at least have a political voice at a very shakey time.....The intention was good but the material was mostly crap...

Mer de Noms and 13th step are f***ing fantastic though.

Tool will of course release the best album ever. As they do every time......I'm going to predict that this will be they're most important record since Undertow and they're best "overall" since AEnima.

# Mar 2, 2006 @ 9:37 PM ET | IP Logged