Tool bassist Justin Chancellor has revealed that the band is gearing up to spend three months in the studio following their upcoming South American tour, as they work to organize ideas for their long-awaited new album. The Los Angeles-based quartet, whose last album Fear Inoculum was released in 2019, will begin the recording process after their March tour across Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Brazil.
Chancellor explained that the band has accumulated a wealth of ideas over time, but the real challenge comes when they convene to refine and finalize those concepts. “There are a lot of stages in the process,” Chancellor said. “We all have ideas. When they’re good, when we like them, we kind of save them or memorize them. The difficult part is when you actually get together and make decisions about how it’s going to end up. That’s when it becomes a little more mathematical, a little more like in the classroom — there’s a blackboard and there’s numbers and you have to make decisions.”
Chancellor noted that, while Tool has “a really good pile of stuff” from individual contributions, the next phase of the creative process is where things get more complex. “You have to wrestle with each other a bit to get to that next stage,” he explained. “And then you have to record it, which is a whole other thing. It’s like a pregnancy, almost. When you go to the studio, you have to make the final decision on how it’s going to sound and how you’re going to play it, and it’s going to live like that forever.”
Though the band celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2025, Tool has released only five full-length albums. Their lengthy album cycle is part of their creative process, which famously included a 13-year gap between 10,000 Days (2006) and Fear Inoculum (2019). The latter album became the band’s third consecutive No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Chancellor defended the band’s extended timelines, attributing the slow pace to their commitment to crafting music that lives up to their high standards.
Fans will have to wait a little longer for the new album, but with months of studio work ahead, Tool is clearly focused on delivering a powerful and meticulously crafted follow-up to Fear Inoculum.
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