NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Say it ain't so!

Well there are definitely several alien abduction themes in a few Tool songs. They've been to Area 51 a lot (or at least Blair has been there a few times). Rosetta stoned hints at some sort of extra terrestrial encounter during a pyschedelic experience. If you watch the X-files, there was a theory of a mass alien abduction possibly happening in 2012. Adam just did the art for the X-files/30 days of night comics. December 21, 2012 is the day the mayan calendar ends and when many rumor the world will end (though it will not). I just think it would make sense for them to release an awesome album and tour through 2012. If they have a show on Dec. 21st, I'd like to be there. If the world were to end, what a way to go out :)

Is that a commercial or a movie? And they designed special levels just for Tool. And that is one of the only third party merchandiser that Tool has ever licensed their image/logo/music to. Unless somebody corrects me and it turns out they sell Tool wrench keychains at Walmart....god, don't even tell me....

Christ... to you and Croma...

It was an example that Tools music has been "sold"... licensed before.

Gotta be so picky.

GH was at least somewhat tasteful.

I think any Tool song, old or new, seems pretty cheesy to be stuck in a trailer for the latest in the parade of comic book movies.

I wonder if there is any hope or chance that Tool may have one, or perhaps a couple songs that won't make on to the coming album but could theoretically pop up in a live performance.

It's part wishful thinking on my part, but it's stemming from Maynard's supposed intent to be more involved in the writing process for this next album. It certainly seems that its just been Danny, Justin and Adam working hard for the past several months. That will obviously continue while APC does their tour and Maynard finalizes what appears to be an upcoming Puscifer EP/LP.

So if Maynard really does what to be involved, I'd see that as more that just showing up when the composition is roughly 80% done and he just starting throwing down vocal and lyrical treatments with a few adjustments here and there. So perhaps this will mean even more time in the rehearsal space. With so much time spent, perhaps a couple compositions might get put aside that are purely unrefined instrumental pieces.... that could perhaps make an appearance live as some Merkaba-esque type performance.

I said it already of course. Wishful thinking. But I have nothing better to do right now.

good fucking god, please get the fuck away from here.

nnnnnnnnope. Intolerance is about his time at West Point (their oath being "I will not lie, cheat, and steal and I will not tolerate those who do. beware my power, green lantern's light") and 4 degrees is thus named because of the temperature difference between the asshole and the cunt. This is age-old FAQ stuff that everyone knows.

who the fuck is this Croma kid?

edit: oh god, he's maynard and he's trolling all of us to see how butthurt we get about unimportant Tool minutia, isn't he? Well played may-may.

My money's still on a new album coming out in 2012. I just don't see one coming sometime this year. Call me a pessimist if you want

ok

kruppo, you're such a pessimist

It is also age old FAQ information that 4 Degrees are the first year cadets at the West Point Prep school. Maynard never actually went to the real West Point - he was offered a scholarship but turned it down to be a musician. Yes, I know about the 4 degree temperature difference, but 4 Degrees is again a song that uses the metaphor for Rape to illustrate someone forcing ideas onto others against their will, such as military brainwashing (or religion). The song mentions being locked away underneath a castle - the prep academy resembles a castle or fortress. I'm not a noob and I'm not a troll, I've been posting since 2001, this is just a new account. I just get a little ticked when I see people make comments that Tool writes songs about 'butt secks'. Its an oversimplification and many people actually believe that is all these three songs are about. Also many think its about the joys of anal sex, I used to know girls who would fuck to Prison Sex cause they thought it was hot, not realizing what the song was actually about. It is no wonder Maynard doesn't make songs that talk about Rape or use Rape as a metaphor anymore - some people like them for the wrong reasons, they are extremely personal, and they are easily misinterpreted. That said, you were probably just making a joke, it just touched a nerve. I'll let it go, happy trails.

Agreed. Captain America? Were they trying to be Ironic? Or maybe Adam's a fan of that comic book?

On the topic of the new album, does anyone remember a post a few years ago about Danny Carey studying Indian Gamelan percussion? The post is still on the website, it shows a picture of him touching one of the Gamelan xylophone thingies. I haven't seen anyone mention this, but maybe it will influence a new direction in his drumming on the album. I did see a post in this thread that someone mentioned he was recording samples in the rain forest for the mandala, which would also be cool.

Actually, Maynard disagrees:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXU4F31D_oo

/checkmate

Well damn! Of course there is no chance Maynard would ever be sarcastic :) I love how people only respond to the argument, noone responds to the post I made about the new album.

Which post? You've made about 35 already, most of which were consecutive because you can't fathom using the edit button. Also, just to entertain your argument I re-read the Undertow part of the FAQ and there is no mention of 4 degrees being the moniker of cadets at West Point. Like I said though, there was the validation of the temperature idea I brought up.

Croma the point is many of the songs have multiple interpretations, some of which are tongue in cheeck innuendo. 4 degrees could be many things, but it certainly is written so that it COULD be butt secks.

So people want more butt secks songs. Get over it.

tool songs are like ogres, and onions. they have layers.

This

I'd like to point out that I have only made 8 (this is 9) posts on this thread...not 35..jesus. Toolfans like taking dick up their asses, Great! I already let this go - Lets try this again: does anyone remember a post a few years ago about Danny Carey studying Indonesian Gamelan percussion? The post is still on the website, it shows a picture of him touching one of the Gamelan xylophone thingies. I haven't seen anyone mention this, but maybe it will influence a new direction in his drumming on the new album. I did see a post in this thread that someone mentioned he was recording samples in the rain forest for the mandala, which would also be cool.

I don't think you did let it go though, 'cause you brought it up again.

I'm not really sure what sort of response you're looking for. I mean, I get it. You're excited about whatever wonderful sounds and thumps and bumps [not in an anal sense, to be absolutely clear, har har] he'll throw down on the next album. I don't think an instrument itself would necessarily facilitate the conjuring of ideas. But still, it is exciting to think of what newfangled toys he may bust out on this new record.

..,,.

Yes, everyone knows that Danny studies some tabla-bongo-hippie-;adjksf;kljad;sflkjadsf-drumming shit.

No. Not tabla. Indonesian Gamelan. Look it up on wiki. It's pretty cool. After the 10,000 days tour wrapped, he went to indonesia. Its a completely different form of percussion. Almost every gamelan set is tuned differently. I can't believe I'm on toolnavy and noone thinks Danny carey's drumming is worth talking about. Isn't this the new tool album thread?

not drumming, gamelanning.

get it right!

Both the idea of rainforest samples and gamelan influence sound very cool. Gamelan is very different from western music, though, so I wonder how he would incorporate it. I would imagine that he would most likely just use some cool samples.

The gamelan videos I just watched on youtube sounded pretty clangy and basically just annoying sounding. Anyone have a good video of this gamelan nonsense?

Did you watch this one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldPMifPbngc ? I like that one quite a bit, and have not watched many others.

Derp-a-durp?

Kulintang are pretty sweet too.

Instruments like these have a very rich and complex texture, though. It's hard to reproduce, and the shitty quality of Youtube sound isn't helping. In person or on a good recording, they are intriguing instruments. Definitely different than what western ears are used to hearing, which tends to lead to a lot of confused reactions.

I think that all sounds pretty intriguing. I'd both appreciate and almost expect danny to want to tap into that style and infuse it into his playing. It's that experimental/creative aspect of him and the rest of Tool that keep my interested after all this time.

Totally. While they're all fucking awesome, I'm tempted to say: Tool = Danny.

I think its awesome he may take his style in a completely new direction. He's still growing and challenging himself as an artist. I think the Gamelan influence will result in some new sounds on the mandala, but more importantly I think that it may open him up to some new rhythmical ideas that could be very cool.

@Neel - thats a good video of gamelan, very cool

http://jazo.tv/newbassline.mov

This is from a recording at the July 10, 2010 show in Seattle. Before Vicarious starts they played this little jam during the 2010 tour (and at a few others in the 10,000 Days tour).

To me it sounds like a definite start to a bass line. I love the peaceful vibe it gives off and cannot even imagine how awesome the addition of Adam and Danny would make it.

It almost reminds me of the sound a grandfather clock makes at the top-of-the-hour chime.

Alright, there's been a bunch of twaddle spilled about the meaning of 4 degrees and it's time to clear the air some. I hope those in the back row are particularly paying attention.

There are, as in most artistic expressions, a myriad of interpretations to be given to 4 degrees. Such is the nature of the aesthetic. (As an aside for the more philosophically minded: this characteristic of aesthetic experience, and its relation to the perceptual and ultimately logical characteristics of our non-inferential observational rapport with the world, is something that runs throughout a whole domain that is properly thought of as 'aesthetic.' Truths of god, self-awareness, our socio-ethical constitution, and even the pink cubes and red pyramids of the phenomenologist, are to be understood along categories that have their home in aesthetics.)

Now with the interpetation of Tool's art there is more at work than just arbitary subjective experience. Such an approach to their work is only going to end in solipsistic nonsense, navel gazing of the most insipid variety. But the task is even worse than the need to get beyond one's own subjective perspective (or, perhaps better, to OWN one's perspective wholly as one's own).

In the first place there is the intentional obsfucation of the band and their compatriots. This is, as Blair has often remarked, in part to ensure that the foolish who would put this art to ill use would be blocked by their own incompetence--it takes a peculiar cast of mind, and a dedication of will, to effect the understanding necessary to truly utilize what lies hid beneath the surface of their work (echoes of undertow's euphoria ring in the background). In some ways it is the more apt students who are likely to suffer for their effort. That someone who understands the nature of the game should lose everything that is of any value is a heartache that only the gifted can experience, and because of this they are cursed by their gift.

But once the aspirant has breathed the air of god long enough, she begins to be able to appreciate the deeper truths enshrined in that hallow symphony. ("Mark well" the value of that word!)

And in this regard 4 degrees is fairly easy to understand.

In short, the song is about the 7th degree on Crowley's expansion of the Golden Dawn tree of life, where the ritualist takes part in a ceremony that represents the passage from Yetzirah to Binah, from the world of creation to that of form, and the crossing of the abyss of the sphere of knowledge (daath). The whole album (Undertow) is devoted to this idea. Intolerance is the banishment of the self with the dagger of yetzirah, that tool one uses when the sphere of the sun is the locus of action (the sun of course the seat of psychic sacrifice, self-immolation). Undertow (the song) is itself an expression of that experience of total self-annihilation and what lies beyond (or beneath). To cross the abyss that separates the lower 7 spheres of the tree of life from the supernal spheres (cf Isaac Luria's story of the shattering of the vessels) was, for Crowley, to completely lose oneself in the fire of the divine. To be reborn on the other side of that abyss one must be willing to give up oneself as one knows it, so as to be reborn as a babe on the other side, a new star shining in the heavens. (Nightwish's "Nemo" is about this same experience, 'nemo' being the title Crowley gave himself on that stage of his experience, 'nemo' meaning 'no name'.)

4 degrees is a song that references one of the rituals Crowley created to encapsulate this idea on the Golden Dawn's tree of life, the system that had been developed by that fraternity as a method of synthesizing the western esoteric tradition. It is a sexual ritual, one that calls for the two partners to create by their intermingling a substance that is imbued with the virility of both, a manna to be then ingested at the consummation of the act ("take what's left and eat it"). In doing so the practitioners are taking part in a ritual that is as old as western civilization itself (cf. the ancient practice of ingesting the god, found in the communion of Christians; also consider Osiris' mating with Isis after his death and dismemberment to beget Horus).

The practice itself is difficult to achieve, as far too seldom do we find partners who line up with the requirements necessary to accomplish the work in any manner other than the dim glow of a drug-addled candlelit porno, and for the ritual to work one needs a truly consummate union. Again, it is the simple-minded who have the least to fear. The inept are often saved from the ravages of the work by their own ineptitude--it is the right-minded who, should they squander their ability, find themselves lost in the tidal forces of this practice.

/me fires spitball at fraterps from the back row

what a turgid, self-indulgent post. "the aspirant" made me lol.

Ah, pearls before swine.

Good comic strip