I found on 3rd Eye italian forum some interesting articles
Andy King's reviews Track 1- “Vicarious” (7min 3sec). Mesmeric start. Hypnotic beat. Jagged, angular off beats. Familiar trancey passages punctuated by a guitar part reminiscent of an older Tool track. Tribal drum beats fuck with a lovely melody and climax with Maynard’s vocals. Track 2 “Jambi” (7min 12sec) Melodic intro with almost balladic vocals from Maynard. Lighter feel (almost, dare I say it, APC-tinged) but not for long. Danny gets stronger – Baresi releases our tubthumper and the feel gets much heavier into ‘chugga chugga’ off beats. Then – here’s some unusual guitar work. Man, it’salmost Hendix-like! Then back into a heavy tribal groove Track 3 “Wings For Marie (Pt 1)” (6min 20sec) / Track 4 “10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)” (10min 26sec) Starting with Buddhist temple-flavoured gong tweaking the collective nipples of Kraftwerk, a deep sphincter-rumbling bass and om chanting might recall ‘Parabol’. After 3 minutes of this nerve-wracking niceness, all Hell breaks loose with mega-heavy riffdom before slipping back into spaciness after 30 seconds. Like an epileptic convulsion in a night of deep sleep. Hawkwind does Greensleeves whilst Pink Floys look on. The Record Company people are starting to look nervous and uncomfortable as if they have seldom HEARD anything so strange and worrying. What the fuck is this? Let me outta here! I need to go snuggle the Radio One Playlist! Suddenly it’s a crazed sea shanty for whacked-out space travelers. ‘You’re the only one who can hold your head up high. It’s my time now… my time now… give me my… give me my…’ duets Maynard with himself. Danny fights free of the evil clutches of Dr Baresi and goes off on one. Adam’s guitar recalls something off Lateralus again. It’s Triad, I think, but it’s almost impossible to identify one riff whilst another song goes on. The musical equivalent of rubbing one’s head and tummy simultaneously in different directions. They’re doing this on purpose to fuck with our heads. Bastards! Returns to full-on rhythmic Toolishness to end. No it isn’t the end. It doesn’t end like any other song ends. Track 5 “The Pot” (Probably 6min 11 sec) Oooooooh. This is THE one. Ya know what, pluggers? Radio might even go for this! Maynard’s vocals at the start are quite extraordinary. Place equal parts of Chris De Burgh, Tiny Tim and Bilal The Muezzin in a blender and run for your life. Easily the most commercial track to date. In fact, easily the most commercial track Tool have EVER done. That guitar is waaay strong again. Did Adam bribe Baresi? This is still twisted. It’s hard but commercial. The end spells a relief as climactic as a boil bursting. I go ‘Yessssss’ and the whole room of cool jouros looks round at me as if I’m a Bateman cartoon ‘The Man Who Ordered A Pork Sandwich In Blooms’. This is a SERIOUSLY awesome track. Just you mark my words. Track 6 “Lipan Conjuring” (1min) In which Maynard becomes a Native American for no good reason. Strange, but we like a bit of strangeness. Track 7 “Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann)”/ “Rosetta Stoned” (14min 45sec) (Could be two medium length tracks and a terribly short one, too. I’m now losing the will to live with the stopwatch. It’s 14min 45sec of music, whatever) Guitars to the fore again. One long note with almost blues-like, overlaid note progressions. f@!# me, it’s House Of The Rising Sun cut with Ketamine. There are unsettling whispers and talking. Is this a bad trip or a psychiatry session? Come to think of it, is there a difference? ‘How Are You Today?’… ‘Tell Me Everything’ then THWACK! Into such a breathtakingly slappy, powerful riff kick that I’m actually physically winded for a nanosecond. Demonic, growling, rap noise over rhythmic heavy heavy groove. Forget the Were Rabbit jibe. This is a f@!# full-on, nasty, shaven headed WEREWOLF. A lightbulb goes mental in the room. The Record Company almost lose all cool and run for it. I damn nearly join them but now I AM crying. I am gulping back wracking sobs at the sheer Toolishness of this monstrous, magnificent track. This is the real deal. Again snippets from Lateralus. You ARE playing with us. You ARE! This is Tool’s equivalent of ‘spot the Hitchcock in the Hitchcock film’! But I don’t care. It’s like The Best Of Tool in one song. The Bomb. It ends like the violent end of a violent life. And then it ends again. Unless that’s another track, of course…. Track 9 “Intension” (6min 44sec). Odd noises. Sea shore meets ironworks. Ever see the cartoon meisterwerk ‘Spirited Away’? You MUST! In it there is a character called Kamajii The Boiler Keeper who has 6 arms and an army of small black coals. This sound is similar. Soon joined by elastic bass and drum twangling over multi-layered Maynard whisperings and chanted vox. Shades of Pink Floyd again. Shades of the more ‘moody’ Lateralus tracks again. Reflection. Disposition. Tribal and hypnotic. Track 10 Right In Two (9min 04sec. I think) Melodic, slow, hypnotic. Almost balladic. Wall of Sound build-up. Danny does some Bamboo pole-type drumming into big rif***e. Big, big sound. Tool at their weightiest. It’s almost Chinese at the end. Track 11 “Viginti Tres” The walk out track (their description not mine). Oddness. The Noodles of Satan. ----------------------------- http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/702/tewl7ix.jpg ------------------------------ Australian listening party impression: “Now something that people might think I have held out, but I might as well drop the bombshell now… I was privileged enough to hear the brand new Tool album yesterday in its entirety. It is titled ’10,000 Days’ and it will be released on the 6th of May (Australia) and the members were present during the listening session, of cause Justin Chancellor, Danny Carey and Maynard James Keenan are currently in Australia promoting the album. And what can I say about the brand new album? Well some might have had the privilege of going to a few listening parties, and yes they are privileges, but after a couple of songs you get a little bit distracted and you start talking to people because I really find it difficult to take in an album, regardless of what it is, the very first time when you’re sitting there amongst people and you’re all staring at the floor like you’re at a funeral and at the end of a song you’re sort of obligated to clap etc. But I will tell you the opening cut for the new Tool album just smacked me in the head and it certainly is far more aggressive than what you’ll hear on or what you heard on Lateralus album. The band have actually said they’ve been listening quite heavily to Meshuggah which they’ve taken out on tour several times over the last couple of years… and throughout the rest of the album there certainly are very lengthy Tool tracks where they’re definitely renowned for those progressive sound scapes and Danny Carey as always is truly on fire with some amazing drumming. And there’s a couple of interesting vocal ideas too put in there by Mr. Maynard James Keenan. This is a very brief assumption on the album so I’m looking forward to hearing it properly when it does come out so May 6th is the release date (Australia) for the new Tool album called ’10,000 Days’ but expect nothing short of a monstrous production. Not exactly sure who produced this new album? I don’t think they used Dave Botterill on this one but it’s certainly raised the bar in the production stakes for the band even though we’ve always known them, the last few albums, to have very very polished productions. Expect the same on the new one. But expect a lot more heavier tunes as well. So that’s a mini mini brief rap-up of the new Tool album. Not a lot to give because like I said it’s very distracting to sort of listen to albums in that sort of environment. I just cannot wait to get a hold of the album when it comes out like everybody else because I don’t think there will be any advanced copies going out. And what I noticed too, when the band turned up, actually right at the very end of the album, Mr. Maynard James Keenan, white shirt and jeans and a cowboy hat, I kid you not, walked over to the DJ booth, and there was only a good 20 or 30 people there in this venue, walks over to the DJ booth as the last song finished, ejected the cd himself, put it in the cover and put it in his pocket. So there you go. The band are personally delivering this album themselves and taking it back themselves because of, generally, internet leaks which happens in albums like this, especially in the anticipation in an album like Tool, which has been 5 years in the making since Lateralus’ 2001 release. So there you go. Look out for the new Tool album May 6th and ask me what I’m gonna think of it around that time when I’ve really absorbed it as well as yourself. I’m always curious to hear what you people think of certain releases that are coming out as well…” ------------------------------- Thanks to toolshed.it «
all posts © their respective authors. the tool page is not responsible for any of their thoughts, brilliant or otherwise.
|