Legal wrangle holding up new Tool material

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By ( Louder ) published

Band speak out on reasons for delay and reveal they have written new songs

Tool say they know fans are “pissed” at the lack of new material, but insist the delay is outside of their control.

The band’s last album was 2006’s 10,000 Days and fans never tire of asking when they can expect a follow-up.

After a few false dawns, guitarist Adam Jones and drummer Danny Carey have finally explained the reasons behind the hold up, blaming a series of complicated legal issues. The problems stemmed from an incident in 2007 in which a friend of the band claimed he had created artwork for the group and wanted credit.

An insurance firm that the band thought would defend them in the case then turned round and sued them.

Jones tell Rolling Stone: “The fans are pissed at us. And while part of me is selfish and goes, ‘I’m not necessarily doing it for them,’ it’s time that they understand what’s going on.

“And it’s costing millions and millions and millions of dollars to defend us. And the fans are all going, ‘We want a new Tool album. What the fuck?’ And you don’t want to pull people into your problems, because they don’t understand.

“But the point is, we’re fighting the good fight. We’re going to trial and we want to crush them. But every time we’ve gotten close to going to trial, it gets postponed and we’ve wasted money and time and it has just drained our creative energy. We bought an insurance policy for peace of mind, but instead we would have been better off if we never had it and just dealt with the original lawsuit.”

The case is due to go to trial next January, so the delay will continue. But the band have been writing and have at least one song completed, according to Carey, who says it is 10-minutes long and more metal sounding than their earlier material.

He adds: “I’m hoping that we have something really solid recorded by the end of the year. But we’ll see how it goes. I thought that last year, too. But we’re making great progress. We’ve really knocked out a lot of good things, especially over the last month. We’re all excited about it.”

Stef Lach

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.