10,000 Accolades

When I was fifteen years old, I used to listen to Tool’s Lateralus riding my bike on the way to school. The peaceful, surreal opening of The Patient still reminds me of gliding through the wind early in the morning. So, when people ask me how long I’ve been waiting for a new Tool album, I can say with honesty, it’s been a long time. Listening to something you’ve been anticipating for five years is hard; you know how excited you are. You know what you want to feel. But you also know what happens when your expectations are so high; the anticipated falls short. As excited as I was, I recognized that fact, and I was ready for a let down. I was ready to say, when asked, “Well, it’s not as good as their older stuff.” But May 2nd came, and forget about that. Forget about expectations and forget about pre-judging the complexity and bravura of this group. 10,000 Days blew me away, and I’m not just saying I was impressed by it. I’m saying that I feel ashamed for my prejudices. Ashamed that I was ever presumptuous enough to think that a force as magnificent as this could be bested by such insignificant challengers as time or psychological metamorphosis. “This is the first Tool album since Maynard became a “recovery” artist.“ or “Maynard is noticeably distracted with A Perfect Circle.” There were excuses. There was reasoning for why this new one could suck. But my bringing them up here…it’s more like confession then recalling of events. Tool is a force more powerful than I, and I am humbled by their latest progression.

The journey of Tool is like no other. We begin angry and defiant, with a hint of intriguing insight, in Tool’s six-track EP Opiate. The drums pound with the force of hammers. The melodies slam and wail with tempered fury. And Keenan’s vocals are everywhere; they are like a caged beast, unleashed with roaring intensity into eyebrow-raising heights. One is astounded by the impossibly long notes he holds; he seems to choose the one at the peak of the vocal climax, and stretch it further into the music than anyone is prepared for. Our first taste of a full-length album comes with Undertow, and already we can feel the music progressing into new levels. The deep, ominous bass of “Flood” builds, and builds, and builds. The momentum is endless, but we are never bored; we take a new step with the music, as if it guides us along. And Keenan’s words are like a puzzle. But one of endless proportions, endless dimension. It’s a puzzle we can never solve, and that makes it the most amazing kind of puzzle. It lingers unsolved forever, allowing new generations to pick up the pieces and wonder. Then Aenima invades us, moving us to new heights, posing new questions, and jarring our emotions with the compelling complexity of its mood. We remember the rage of albums past with “Hooker with a Penis”; the future is hinted at with “Third Eye” It takes its time, packing on layer after layer, evolving within its confines. It pulsates back and forth, and the lyrics remind us what we are experiencing; we are forging new depths, widening the boundaries of our consciousness. Prying open our third eyes.

“So good to see you, I missed you so much.” After breaking the barrier of conventional music and leaping straight into the psyche of logic and philosophy with Lateralus, Tool took yet another five year hiatus. I must admit that I was too young to fully appreciate the grandeur of Tool pre-Lateralus, and that I never suffered in my youth during their previous absences. But this most recent one lingered on for me like a jail sentence. My fellow fanatics and I emerged like starving Ethiopians from our hiding places on May 2nd, 2006, and we were gratified with the most satisfying meal of our lives.

10,000 Days picks up right where Lateralus left off, with the energetic and familiarly unique “Vicarious“. It reminds us of Lateralus, the title track to that album; Maynard’s voice echoes and reverberates; his words pierce our minds once again, like an old friend activating sleepy nerve endings. With Jambi, we trod with a jolt of high tempo back into our favorite creative realm, one with odd time signatures and unheard-of drum techniques. Up to this point, we have taken this band’s message of total individuality with a grain of salt; anyone with a record label contract will undoubtedly be influenced by the sway of their profit-oriented producers, at least to a certain degree. At this point, it becomes clear to us that this element may no longer exist; the time of proving oneself is over for Maynard and Tool; pure, unaltered creativity is free to run rampant.

“What are they gonna do when the lights go down, without you to guide them all to Zion?” 10,000 Days, the title track to this masterpiece, and its calmer prelude, Wings for Marie, left me in tears from the first listen. Keenan’s epic tribute to his recently deceased mother is realized with an eerie, broken passion. The music echoes and vibrates; it reminds us of a storm of increasing intensity. The sound of soft rainfall in the background solidifies this intent; it is easy to picture our hero, drenched in the downpour, howling his requiem into the night. In A Perfect Circle’s “Judith” , Maynard seemed to be lashing out, angry and frustrated at his mother’s undying faith in God, despite being paralyzed for much of her life. “Fuck your God, your Lord, and your Christ”, he cried, “[He] left you this way, [and you] never thought to question why.” The actual event of Judith Marie Keenan was much more synchronized with the creation of A Perfect Circle’s second album, Thirteenth Step. I surmise, however, that he must have saved this one for Tool; only their broad, uncompromising depth could possibly do proper justice to his mourning. A compelling and powerful maturation from anger to acceptance puts his mother to rest with dignity and vivid emotion. In the haunting final moments, he chants, “Should you see your maker’s face tonight, look him in the eye and tell him…it’s time for you to bring me home.”

If the themes of 10,000 Days were easy to recognize, that song is the sole exception. Our next experience, called The Pot, is the most lyrically perplexing/intriguing track on the album. Is the title a reference to drugs? Does it refer to society, the great melting pot? Is it an accusation of hypocrisy, the pot calling the kettle black? Or maybe it’s all of those. The meaty bass and jarring, hostile rhythms seem to cater to the attitude pumping through the lyrics and vocal style. He speaks of someone who is “eyeballs deep in muddy water”, who has “got lemon juice up in [their] eye.” The verse resonates with the aggressive sting of someone who’s ego has been cut down to size; apparently, the verbal attacker to whom he is responding hit a major nerve. “Who are you to wave your finger?” He demands answers from the arrogant perpetrator. He attacks their credibility, saying that they have “hung the guilty with the innocent”. The master poet behind this slew of clichés grows progressively more aggravated as we slide through the six-minute track (a short one, by this album’s standards). The instrumentals from Adam, Justin, and Danny bounce back and forth with Maynard’s voice in this track, allowing his major points to hit home with more electricity then ever. This only relents during an entertaining solo that acts as a good “interlude for contemplation“, a moment that is best (and often, by me) spent pondering the mystery behind the puzzle of words.

Chosen as a fitting interlude , “The Pot” ends as suddenly as it began, and we widen our scope again, readjusting to the frequency we used for “Wings” and “10,000 Days”. But don’t take that to mean that the songs are similar. In the opening moments of “Lost Keys (Blame Hoffman)”, a high-pitched blare of feedback begins. Our minds predict a traditional opening, like in many clever rock songs, one where feedback rings for a few seconds, and then suddenly, we are blasted with a fast and energetic opening. Tool tricks us into thinking that’s what we’ll hear, but this track is slow-paced. The feedback continues, going on so long that it becomes a fully operating layer of music. The tempo bubbles, impossibly slow, and we don’t know what to expect. Then, after nearly three minutes of brewing, our story begins.

A nurse approaches a doctor with a situation. The man in the next room, she tells him, will not speak to anyone. Beyond that, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with him. The doctor, who seems prepared for any bizarre situation, responds by calmly approaching the man and offering a listening ear. This short dialog, complete with a voice cast and realistic sound effects, runs behind the submissive instrumentals for the final moments of “Lost Keys (Blame Hoffman)”, at the end of which the kind, British-accented doctor asks his patient, “What's happened? Tell me everything.” The calm, repetitious melody shifts, as if clearing its throat for response. “Alrighty then,” replies a distorted voice as we slide seamlessly into “Rosetta Stoned”. “Picture this if you will.” With a blast, the music explodes, and our disturbed narrator takes off like a rocket. The style of speech has been described to me as “word salad”, something schizophrenics apparently do. Jumbled pieces of word and phrase whiz past our ears incomprehensibly fast; it will take three or four listens before any part of this rant can be understood. But the content for this track has never been as interesting as the way in which it is introduced to us.

Maynard has redefined “in character” for the world of music. As do all others who grace the stage, musicians often step into complicated “roles” as a part of their creative process. But “Rosetta Stoned” has cranked the storytelling up two notches higher than “dramatic music” has ever gone. The song moves from its absurdly brilliant prologue into a more conventional setting for the final eight minutes. Adam's guitar works with a familiar experimentation as Maynard trudges on, still in character as a paranoid psycho that has had some sort of alien encounter (or so he believes). The character goes on to vividly describe being strapped to the bed in the psych ward. His vocals take a despairing tone in the final moments; it seems, though he was appointed by his alien visitors to write down and deliver an important message to the world, he forgot his pen.

The final two tracks of the album, “Intension” and “Right in Two”, help us wind down from the broad scope of the earlier tracks. With Tool, you have the “meat and potatoes” of an album, usually during the beginning and middle, and you have the “experiment” tracks, usually located at the end. As “Intension” begins, soothing guitar and bizarre background sounds lead into a flurry of musical activity. The bass winds up and down with echoing guitar and vocals. And Danny Carey's drums go incomprehensible places. They are anything and everything you've never heard before, and that's as well as they can be described.

“Right in Two” rounds out the album, and we are again drawn inevitably into an irresistible quest to decode the brilliance behind Keenan's enigmas. The words seem to be general commentary about the nature of the human race, from the viewpoint of an angel looking down on the world. The quiet flow of the track builds into a brief period of passionate angst. The angels' frustrations mirror ours; this masterful album is over too quickly. 75 minutes is nowhere near the amount of vision we crave from Tool. But that's all they give us. Tool's three full-length releases before this one were all about the same length. And the band reappears only every five years or so. Because Tool's music is not something that can be mass-produced. It can't be assembly-lined into stores every six months, sponsored by Nike. It operates under a more respected, more dedicated principle.

Tool sits now at the throne of what we call “progressive” music. Their work is of a breed that only comes along every so often in the world of rock. They follow a higher calling, and take new steps into unknown territories with their work. They are something that will be looked back upon, years from now, as a powerful force. They truly are magnificent pioneers of music. “10,000 Days” has made a mark that will not fade for decades. Bravo, Tool. It has been worth the wait.