Tool - 10,000 Days (Sony BMG)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
What's the first thing you come across when you're about to spin a record? It ain't the sound, that's for sure. Even if these days your ears only encounter music by some digital means, at some point your eyes have to gaze upon something, and some part of your body has to depress a button, otherwise silence will continue unabated. Physicality remains very much part of the experience, and being aware of this more than most, Tool know the point of good packaging. The house they build for '10,000 Days' consists of cardboard sturdier than the foundations of my flat holding numerous magic eye exercises and a pair of fully operable magnifying glasses. Stick that on your sodding iPod.
So lavish are the surroundings and so thrilled will you be with the numerous ways in which to appreciate them that discovering that there's actually a compact disc buried somewhere amongst these many skulls and swirls merely feels like some heavy metal icing on top of an already well decorated cake. But if you thought they took their time with the visuals, prize the disc from them and take a listen. Com-pli-ca-ted stuff.
In truth, despite it's various, genuine, complex merits, it sounds decidedly similar to 'Lateralus', their last, superb outing of five long years ago (which in turn wasn't hugely different from 'Aenima' now, was it?). But that Tool do this so rarely, and take so much time painstakingly making sure everything about it sounds and looks - and probably tastes, we haven't tried licking it yet - perfect, means that the noise hasn't got old - there simply hasn't been enough of it to get bored of, and nor has anyone else in widely popular heavy guitar music bothered to try catching up with them. As such, '10,000 Days' finds them not racing even further ahead of the pack, but taking leisurely, considered steps in the right direction. It'll still take everyone else years to catch up.
So, a fan before will be a fan once more. It's vintage tool, destined to be at once anthemic and baffling, to prompt mass adoration in sing along form ('Vicarious'), erratic banging of heads ('Jambi') and to initiate ponderous stroking of beards for those few of their fans possessing enough testosterone to grow one (see 'Intension', there are bongos all over the bloody place). It can be dauntingly heavy and eerily quiet (especially in its latter third), but some how it rarely comes across as particularly mean...
For you see, Tool have a sense of humour ('Bethlehem Abortion Clinic' anyone?) and that penetrates '10,000 Days' consistently. They know they're more intelligent than most of their audience precisely because it is only they who can create something this slick and multifaceted and not their listener, and you wonder whether stretching things out to ridiculous proportions (both the title track and 'Rosetta Stoned' stretching things beyond the eleven minute mark, and doing all sorts of crazy things within their slot) might actually be a joke on the person whose head rests between the earphones, knowing that they'll follow whatever the band do because comparatively, they are an idiot.
Joke or no joke, what's best about '10,000 Days' is quite how long it'll take me to get my pretty head around it (including figuring out whether I'm having the piss taken out of me or not, and trying to get my eyes to focus through these bloody glasses). It could all take years. I'm not entirely sure I'll love it quite as dearly as I do currently once that day or realisation finally arrives, either. But given its sheer complexity, despite it being hardly the grandest step forward from previous work, that day might actually never dawn.
Artists in this article: Tool
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