I dont know if anyone has even considered this, but tool had a different producer on 10kdays as we all know. Lateralus and Aenima had David Botrill as the producer. He must have had some influence on these albums, even though tool are so for doing things their way. Perhaps this is why 10kdays sounds a little different or disappointing.

Also, i think tool took more control this time. they pretty much produced it themselves almost. this is completely their thing. no outside influence really. Perhaps this has affected the sound. i love 10kdays, it just still sounds a little off. i dunno, it might just be me. it sounds incomplete.

didnt tool produce it?

no, joe baressi, i think had a hand in it too. this is just from memory.

Ill take a gamble and say the album would have been better had they kept botrill.
And i wouldnt put no small amount on that bet either...

yes, i think botrill could have helped it turn out a little better.

.

This has been discussed to the point of disgust.

really? cuz this is the first ive heard of it. ive never even seen anyone type anything about this. news to me.

Use the search function to find old threads about it. Search for Baressi, I guess... Believe me, you are not alone in your thoughts. But I entirely disagree.

eh, i still like it, it just feels imcomplete.

I don't think Botrill could have changed that feeling in you. With Botrill it would have sounded cleaner and more polished, but I don't really think Tool would have been taking much advice in terms of how they should play their songs. These songs would still essentially be the same, just with a different production (obviously). I think the mood of the songs would not sit well with a Botrill approach. Far better to have the raw, garage quality of Baressi - but balanced well as it is with the huge amount of hi-tech that went into this. I think it is also the mood of the songs that influences your feeling of incompletion. I believe that this is exactly the feeling that most of the songs are born in. This is not an uplifting album like Lateralus. It is about conflict, loss, personal decay and stupidity. There are also elements of great discovery and unity, but these are not the most prevelent aspects of the work. So I think it is natural for listeners to find themselves slightly lost after hearing this album. But once you realise that it is the art itself which encourages this feeling - not some mistake by a producer - then you can find the truly positive message in 10,000 Days. That the only logical path forward from incompletion, from fragmentation, is towards unity. We just need to act. To move by will alone.

thanks impland, that is how i feel about the album. you put it into words for me.

Sweet as. I am happy you understood what I was saying, I was expecting resistance for some reason. :-)

im always open to a different view. it just happens to be mine too. i still wish they would have put one more song on it though. need more music, less interludes.

I remember thinking that about Aenima. I haven't thought it in a long time though. Maybe this is because I have come to enjoy listening to entire albums with all of their movements. However, maybe it is possible that Viginti Tres and Lipan Conjuring could have been replaced with a really wicked spontaneous studio jam.

Baressi didn't produce the album, he was the engineer. Tool produced it.

Good point.

Edit: and there goes my magic post number...

yeah that's what i was thinking the moment i read this thread. i doubt Baressi or Botrill had much say at all in what the songs were. just how they sounded.

now Tool sounds like QOTSA or Kyuss, which i actually like a lot because those are two of my other favorite bands. but i don't think the album would've been different, musically, with a different engineer.

nope, an engineer just works the knobs.

Baressi is responsible for having the guitars being more upfront, which turned out to be a really big fucking mistake.

do a search for barresi, there's tons of threads about this. I'm not gonna be an asshole and lock this one but I would appreciate it if things were searched for, yes.

I gotta agree. Drums are too damn quiet too. Lateralus had a pretty good mix of the 4 seperate guys. I don't know why they decided to put the guitar to the forefront, considering they are an "equality" type band.

to make it more immediately powerful i guess.

i dont scour the threads, so i didnt know this. everyone makes mistakes.

of course. no harm done.

when asked about the producer changes from massey to botrill to themselves the band said that it didnt make a difference to them. i think it was in the revolver magazine article with them as the cover story. they said that throughout their career they would do a lot of producing work themselves (hince on all their other albums it would cite tool as co-producers) and botrill or massey would ask for a producer credit and they said sure and gave it to them. i dont think it would make any difference on this album if they had kept botrill or massey or gotten anyone else for that matter.

the band also said that they had the songs like 90 something percent done before they went into the studio. so the songs wouldn'tve been any different, just the overall sound.

I think the album is different, just like all of their albums, and this album is just as good as all their alubms. The producer had no real influence on my opinion. Baressi clearly went for a rougher sound. It was a sound that Tool wanted.

they called in barresi to get the sound they wanted for the album.

sounds just as good as when i first put it on. infact i think the sound is even better than on lateralus in my opion.

The sound overall IS better than on Lateralus. Lateralus is too tame in my opinion. Definitely not raw-sounding enough. But it worked for that album. That whole record was squeaky clean.

This album needed to sound unhinged, wreckless, like it was about to just burst at the seams. You can feel it in the songs themselves. Like at the end of the breakdown in Right In Two, before the vocals come back in, where the Danny is absolutely exploding on the drums and the bass and drums do the hits -- there is clipping and crackling all over the place, but the actual quality of the sound, the timbre of the notes and the tone and just everything is perfect for what they are trying to do. At least from my perspective.

This album needed to sound warmer and more alive. Getting Bottril to help dial in what they wanted would have likely resulted in something more cold and mechanical, which is perfect for albums like Aenima and Lateralus. But not this one.

And maybe it's the systems I use, but I hear the drums just fine. They sound very loud to me. Louder than on any other Tool record, that's for sure. Being a drummer as well as a guitarist, I listen for all the subtleties, and I can definitely hear them all.

When I listen to Lateralus now, I think the vocals are way too loud.

...or maybe thats why it sounds so sublime.

The Lateralus production was very good. I thought everything was done perfectly on that album. 10kdays has a louder sounds, more in your face. everything is just fine EQ wise EXCEPT for the vocals. they could have been bumped up just a bit. other that than 10kdays sounds fucking sweet, especially the drums.

A while ago I started a thread about the same thing, because I still think 10kdays is a disappointing. I don't feel the same unity as in previous albums. Besides, some songs are unbearable to me, like The Pot or Right in Two. Sorry, that's my opinion.

I wouldnt go that far. AEnima is still a clean, precise bottrill-esque album. Undertow was raw-sounding.

Yah the album does sound incomplete... And I think in terms of production this is the worst tool album to capture what the songs are trying to interpret since Opiate...And thats just b/c that was their first shit...It was simple and too the point and they didnt really need big production to make Opiate sound any better than it could have.

it just sounds like its missing something to me. like another song, it just feels too short really. i mean theres really only 7 songs on here, and 2 of them are over 15 minutes long. it just needs one more fucking song.............i mean im satisfied with whats presented, and im really starting to dig wings for marie 1 & 2, but it all feels incomplete overall. another song and it would be fucking perfect. and the pot is truly the hooker with a penis for 10kdays. its a good song and everything, but i really love the esoteric and meandering tool the most. it just needs another fucking song dammit.