After bass player Justin Chancellor announced that Tool would be going on a brief hiatus in early 2008, he added that a large part of their break would include work on a new album. Now, it seems as if the release is finally upon us, as Tool has officially announced their plans to drop a new 2010 album. As of right now, much of the news about any potential 2010 release is still firmly planted within the realm of hearsay and rumor. But early this year, the group's webmaster did announce that Tool had begun working on a new album "in earnest." Speaking to MTV after the 2008 Grammys, Tool lead singer Maynard James Keenan said that his band would begin working on their fifth studio album "right away," and added that "the music always comes first." Since then, there's been very little concrete news on the still-untitled album; although in the group's March newsletter, Tool did confirm that they were working "three days a week" in the studio on new material, and that with their latest Puscifer tour soon drawing to a close, "it shouldn't be long before the dry-erase board is filled with a bewildering array of color-coded intros, progressions, agitatos, con sordinos, crescendos, diatonics, inversions, resolutions, transitions, variations, obbligatos, consonance, and endings."
For now, then, the new 2010 album is definitely still a work in progress. But fans patiently waiting for Tool's follow up to 2006's '10,000 Days' can take solace in the fact that there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel--and it's approaching us pretty fast.
