New Tool Album: Bassist Justin Chancellor Claims New Album Is 90 Percent Done

Tool bassist Justin Chancellor has said that that the band’s upcoming new album is almost 90 percent ready. Speaking as a guest on a recent MetalSucks podcast, Chancellor spoke of the upcoming album, calling it a crazy science project and saying that they were adding the finishing touches.

“We’re about 90-percent there, it’s been like a crazy science project, kind of like a petri dish.

“We’ve just been really picky over what we want to put on this new album and really want to come up with something completely unique.

“Plus, we have endless amounts of material to sift through, so it’s just been a process — a little different from last time.”

Chancellor claims that being out on tour this year has really helped the band increase its pace in working on the new album, Loudwire reported. Another report by Alternative Nation stated that the band’s frontman, Maynard James Keenan, has confirmed Chancellor’s claims that the new album is 90 percent done.

Tool’s near-mythical fifth studio album is widely rumored to be released sometime later this year. In March, it was announced that Maynard James Keenan was currently in the process of recording the vocals for the new album. However, the frontman later said in an interview that there could be yet more delay on the release of the new album, suggesting that it had hit a roadblock.

Rumors of a new Tool album have been floating around since last year. Frontman Maynard James Keenen’s initial reaction to these rumors was to shrewdly lay them to rest with a tweet calling the rumors “dumb.” However, despite Maynard’s tweet, some fans still seemed very optimistic.

Revelations from Justin Chancellor, Danny Carey, and Adam Jones confirming the new album had given them reason to do so. Besides, they pointed out how Tool enjoyed messing around with the fans regarding the release of a new album. And indeed, the band has done that in the past, one example being that time they posted fake track listings before the release of Lateralus in 2001.

Earlier in December, bassist Justin Chancellor addressed the delay of the new album in an interview with Bass Player. While Justin seemed somewhat irritated by the repeated questions about the new album, which has somewhat become characteristic of Tool, he did seem to empathize with the fans’ impatience.

“We’ve narrowed things down to big groups of ideas. For the past few months we’ve been working on one of the newer songs fairly exclusively. We get the gist of it and find the main themes that make up the skeleton between verses and choruses.

“Everyone knows we take our time.

“All I can say is that we’ll go back Monday and do our best to finish it for you.”

The band has repeatedly played a new song titled “Descending”, rumored to be featured in their upcoming album, in their recent shows.

[Featured Image by Paul A. Hebert/AP Images]