Tool have been working on a new album for quite some time. Trust them, they’ve been working on it. It’s an album, it’ll have songs, and it’ll come out some time this century, rest assured. So please stop asking about it.

That’s pretty much the vibe Top Guitar got when they recently interviewed Tool bassist Justin Chancellor. The muso mag asked about you know what and were immediately met with, “No, don’t ask that question.”

“Just trust me, it’s going to be awesome,” he then follows. “It’s gonna happen, it’s in the oven. It’s cooking, it’s cooking.” That’s a pretty tactful response considering it was clear Chancellor is stalked by that question everywhere he goes.

As we recently reported, the band are taking their 10,000 Days follow-up very, very seriously. According to the webmaster for the band’s official website, the band are grinding out four days a week on new material.

“[Danny Carey, drummer] added that they were very close to knocking out another tune, and that as soon as it was finished, they would send a recording of it to Maynard [James Keenan],” the webmaster noted.

“When I asked if this was the song with the REALLY unique time signatures, he told me that they had already finished the music on that one. Okay, admittedly, not exactly stop the press news, but what can I say…”

“…other than that they are still grinding away on new material four days a week, and would be back at it later in the week.” Carey is reportedly in Las Vegas at the moment and Jones spent the week at Comic-Con in San Diego.

The webmaster continued with an especially confusing update, noting that Carey mentioned “the possibility of something happening after the record was released” but that this depended on “something that may or may not even happen”.

As a result, the webmaster claimed, he would not be expanding on this, only insisting that if whatever this thing is actually does happen, it would in fact be “stop the press news”. That sounds like more than just a simple tour to us.

The previous month, Melvins frontman Buzz Osbourne claimed that he’s heard some of Tool’s new material, revealing that the shortest song on the new Tool record clocks in at 12 minutes and confirming that recording has not yet begun.

The last we heard from the band before that, writing sessions had been coming along well, with guitarist Adam Jones calling them “wonderful” and saying, “Things are really flowing and going really well, and I’m just blown away at the stuff that’s coming together.”

“I’m excited and can’t wait for it to be done,” he added. Meanwhile, Keenan had previously said that he’s been playing the waiting game just as much as Tool fans and will join the band in the studio once all of the music is actually finished.

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