Tool have once again delivered on April Fool’s Day, playing upon the expectations of fans hoping for their new album.

For years now, Tool have been one of the many bands who consistently partake in the annual tradition of pranking fans with an April Fool’s Day joke.

While we’ve seen some rather serious ones in the past (1997’s Australian bus crash springs to mind), most others have been rather harmless (the 2005 news of Maynard James Keenan’s “rediscovery of Jesus”, drummer Danny Carey leaving the band in 2001, or the band dropping a mariachi song in 2015).

However, with talk of a new album on the way, fans have undoubtedly been a little on edge. After all, what a perfect time than to announce their long-awaited new record on a day that fans will likely disbelieve whatever they hear?

Check out Tool’s ‘Forty Six & 2’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8aT9oRp95A

First, a quick recap of recent Tool album rumblings.

After years of rumours and innuendo, Danny Carey gave fans a promising update in January, explaining that the record would be released in mid-April. “That’s the plan, anyway,” Carey explained at the time.

Sadly, perennial wet blanket Maynard James Keenan refuted this claim in February, responding with a blunt “no” when a fan asked him if this information was true.

Not long after though, Maynard offered up another update, explaining in his “best ballpark guess”, the album’s new release date would be “somewhere between Mid May and Mid July,” while promising “more focused updates to follow as we progress.”

With fans of the band seemingly expecting an annual jape on Monday, Tool took to their official Twitter account to share out a rather underwhelming video. Posted at midnight on the east coast of America, the video was a 37-minute recording of nothing but the ambient sound of crickets.

Was this a reference to the radio silence fans have received in previous months? Or was it a knowing poke at the lack of immediate April 1st trickery?

Well, it seems that this was the prank; not delivering anything on a day that fans had been waiting so eagerly for.

In fact, the band even continued this tomfoolery hours later, sharing out videos of a cricket’s chirp slowed down, a video which contained ’10 hours of crickets chirping’, and finally, a video of George W. Bush’s infamous “fool me once” comment.

Soon, this was followed up by a Tweet from Maynard James Keenan himself who joked about the poor reaction the band’s April Fool’s Day prank received from angry fans.

On local soil, some Aussies even got in on the action of using Tool for an April Fool’s prank, with Melbourne’s Rare Records giving fans the chance to win a promo copy of their new record.

“We can not disclose our source but we are lucky enough to get our hands on the new TOOL album several months earlier than the release date,” Rare Records wrote as part of a fake competition.

“I know! we can hardly contain our excitement.”

Despite the day being used as something of a jovial adventure, dedicated Tool fans over on Reddit are of the belief that we’ll be receiving news quite soon.

In fact, if you wade through the countless joke posts that arose over the last day, some fans have noted that April 1st not only saw Tool’s Twitter account finally become verified, but that their banner image was updated to include the Roman numerals for 2019.

Maybe Tool have just decided to use their annual trickery as a way to lay the groundwork for what will undoubtedly be one of the biggest album announces of the year? Either way, hardcore fans are eagerly awaiting even the slightest bit of news from the iconic group.

Check out Tool’s ‘Lateralus’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tcW-j7KFgY

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