As fans know, it took TOOL 13 years to make their 2019 album Fear Inoculum. During a recent interview with NME, bassist Justin Chancellor gave some insight as to why the process took so long.
“It was never an intention of ours to do it that way! As time went on it just took longer and longer, and I think that stems from the pressure of trying to excel and trying to outdo yourself,” he explained. “There’s always a danger of looking back and comparing ourselves to what we’ve done before, so there’s a certain amount of stuff we had to work through to get to the place where we could create something new and pure and of its own right. I think that’s the reason that the process started to take longer and longer."
Chancellor also revealed that TOOL ended up scrapping a lot of material before coming up with the songs that comprise their last album. "We wrote a whole bunch of stuff, and then at one point we kind of threw it all away," he said. "We got a little frustrated a few times, and people needed to go off and do other things just to kind of get the breeze in their hair and get a fresh perspective. When you get stuck, sometimes you need to walk away.”
The band has assured fans in the past that they won't have to wait that long for more new material, and during the interview Chancellor gave an honest reason why. “We’re just getting old, so it’s the pressure of time. Danny has just turned 63, so if we take 13 more years we’ll be touring when we’re over 70!" he noted. "Now there’s more of a necessity to get something cooking a little faster if we want to keep going strong.”