TOOL Is 'Looking To Go Into The Studio' Very Soon

TOOL drummer Danny Carey spoke to Ireland's Overdrive about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band's long-awaited follow-up to 2006's "10,000 Days" album. "It's all coming together really well," he said. "We'll be hitting the studio again very soon and have a couple of gigs in May, so hopefully we'll have the album out before that. It's wishful thinking at this point. I actually think I said that this time last year. [Laughs]"

When asked if TOOL has new songs already written for the next album, Danny said: "Yes, there's a lot of material that's already done, so we're looking to go into the studio pretty quickly here and off we go. Things are just rollin' along. We don't just hang about here in Hollywood; we are pretty much working all the time."

Carey recently told Kerrang! magazine that TOOL's new music is resolutely non-commercial, even joking that the songs are "too long." Carey explained: "Whatever those guys play is how they express themselves. Adam [Jones, guitar] and Justin [Chancellor, bass] aren't musically educated, so they just come up with the weirdest shit. I just try to anchor it down and make it simple... The tracks are long — too long! Definitely too long for the radio!"

When asked if he could reveal any track working titles or discuss the concept of the record, he replied: "It's all still a work in progress. We don't even go there until the record is done. It needs to have a voice of its own... You don't think about that until the project's finished and it all comes together and connects. Everything has its own voice."

Jones told The Pulse Of Radio not long ago how the band puts its songs together. "We've got lots of material," he said. "Our strongest thing is jamming. But grouping stuff together — and that's kind of how we work, you know, we jam and then you kind of go, 'Wow, this works with this really well' — and then you jam those two things and see if you can get 'em to work."

"10,000 Days" came out in May 2006, more than 11 years ago.

The instrumental members of TOOL have been working steadily on music for the past year, according to reports, with singer Maynard James Keenan rumored to be getting more involved in recent months.