I guess you could consider me a wanna-be professional. I work in the music industry doing mixing/remixing and have for 5 years now.

I want to throw out my theory on why this record sounds the way it does. Imagine hearing an huge explosion from a mile away. Your going to catch the boom, the crash, and then hear the sound fade out at the very tips of the sound spectrum, until it is gone. Its like seeing a flash of light in the dark and watching it disappear until your eyes completely re-adjust. Follow me?

Ok, well imagine experiencing the same explosion 50 ft away. Your going to hear the boom, the crash is nearly going to be inaudible because your ears will adjust, and the final fade out of the explosion is going to be much different than when you were a mile away. However you are experiencing this effect up close. And besides just hearing it, you are feeling it.

I find myself immersed in the 10K days soundscapes much more than previous albums. I feel like I am sitting right in the center of the 4 of these guys playing. It seems as though you can feel the raw pluck of Justins strings. All of the energy easily becomes one, and if you can get deep enough, Maynards vocals do end up on top, and everything else becomes a psychotic rhythm behind him.

Now doing this type of mixing, i would consider it a very, very difficult job. Your bound to have extreme frequency clashes between different instruments and I believe that is where the popping comes in. You all seem to be focused on compressions, well pay attention to what your ears are doing when Tool starts jamming on 10k days. You crave to turn it up.

So look at it like a flaw, or simply their intention of getting your attention. With the complex rhythms they use would it seems a bit weird to have a flawless mixdown? I guess if the mixer spent weeks combing thru Pro-Tools to remove small imperfections it would possibly degrade the raw sound they want to present?

Just my take.