Hey groan, I also have listened to tool since Undertow's release (admitting I did not know who they were during the opiate year).

While I respect your opinion and you have every right to have it, I feel that when you speak for other people I should defend myself. I disagree about your Tool progression (or lack-thereof) theory. Clearly they are not angst ridden any more and certainly have all grown as musicians idividually and as a collective unit. Maynard is finding better ways of expressing himself than in the opiate days when (as much as i did enjoy the agression) would resort to the shallow Fuck you's and Eat shit lyric. He is much more poetic nowadays so his anger and pain is not straight forward as it used to be. I certainly think there is a lot less of it, but good for him if is is happier than he used to be.

One other note. No tool album is much of a "concept album".
Opiate isn't even a record, but a collection of live and studio songs.
Undertow is possibly symbollic of it's water theme, but that is really only considerate of a couple of tracks as well.
Aenima is all over the board, Stinkfist, H, pushit relationship (ala schism), Eulogy was his religious song (ala opiate, judith, wings), jimmy was his song about his youth (ala wings). Anyways, all of there albums aren't tied into one main idea persay, but rather the records capture a mood. I agree that 10000days does not set in on one mood as much as Aenima and Lateralus, but I also don't think that I want to hear a band who releases every single album with restictions on this sort of thing.