Tool
10.000 Days

THE REVIEW

...........This is how I begin my second review. Honestly, I can't find the words to define this work by Tool. If I could give it a 10, I would. If I could give it a 15, I would. If I could avoid giving a score to this album, it would be the first thing I'd do, because it's not wise to judge an album that with 90% probability has forever changed the history of rock.

Oh right, but rock has been dead for quite a while, damn, so let's just screw ourselves and bow down before the last rock band in the history of music. Even here, before definitively trying to express my opinion on the album, I state one thing. Very painfully, I admit this is the first and only Tool album I have in my discography, and until two months ago, I didn't know who these four aliens were, who go by the names of Maynard James Keenan (vocals), Justin Chancellor (bass), Danny Carey (drums, and damn what drums), and Adam Jones (electric guitar). I also admit I have no desire to buy the previous works of these four, because I'm still trying to understand this one, so it's not my fault. To finish, a plea to the friends and reviewers of DeBaser: to keep this site acceptable, let's try to exalt MASTERPIECES like these, instead of mocking the horny and depraved teenagers listening to that (music? huh, maybe not) that comes from overhyped idols like Jesse McCartney, Lee Ryan, and Hilary Duff who soon won't even know how many hairs they have on their asshole they are so arrogant and willing to do anything for a bit of fame.

Fine, Tool. A name, a guarantee, a whole. And this new chapter of the four's magmatic inner search needs to be explored all, without leaving anything out, even if it's nearly impossible. First point: the cover. I sort of remember the covers of the various "Lateralus", "Aenima", "Opiate" and so forth, but even the cover this time is no longer the same: representing a kind of totem or at least a lofty figure with divine semblance is made of cardboard, not the kind you pack food in, mind you, almost cardstock, hence an extremely thick cover. The eleven songs are barely hinted at in the booklet placed inside a CD "compartment," which is mostly illustrated with abstract, almost fractal figures, all colored to make everything truly suggestive and hypnotic. So, the Album, with a capital A.

The first track, called "Vicarious", was chosen as the band's first official single, and never was there a more fitting choice, because it's the only track that for its rhythm and melody can be adapted as a single. Gosh, it's not like "single" is a word that fits the song, because in reality within these 7 minutes and 6 is contained power, charisma, magnificence and above all extreme skill. The composition starts with an extremely simple bass riff, with a rhythm pattern typical of Tool style, and while the alarm of a distant clock brings us back to reality, here the song explodes. The lyrics are truly poetic, never cliché, a denunciation against consumer society. The solo at about four minutes is breathtaking; I felt chills down to my toes, but damn the best was yet to come, the ending is worth all the €23.90 of the album, with these words shouted by Keenan ("Vicariously I/ Live while the whole world dies/ Much better you than I") accompanied by a Danny Carey who stunned me, and if he doesn't take drugs to hit like that, who the hell does? Come on.

The second song is "Jambi", and I must say I didn't like it much, even though the initial guitar strumming accompanied by Carey's furious rolls had me a bit deluded. I find that in the 7.28 total, the song loses a bit of intensity and also loses its way a bit, but a tiny flaw amid an ocean of skill is irrelevant, and nonetheless, I reiterate that tastes are subjective. The third song (divided into two parts, "Wings for Marie pt 1" and "10,000 Days- Wings Pt 2") is a very sweet composition in the first six minutes, as it's dedicated to Keenan's infirm mother who, while with the side project A Perfect Circle raged against her convictions (especially religious ones), now mourns her because she died after a long suffering. Regarding the song, Jones' oddly distant and gentle guitar persists throughout the track, while Maynard with a sweet voice sings tear-jerking verses (really beautiful the last one). A very brief explosion, lasting fifteen seconds, appears around the fifth minute of this very long track (seventeen minutes), and the first part ends with a strange thud echoing for ten seconds. I won't say much about the second part, only that it's more aggressive than the first, starts with an emblematic thunderstorm in the distance and the eponymous title seems to symbolize the days of suffering for Maynard's mother. Perhaps "10,000 Days- Wings Pt 2" resulted too magmatic for me.

The fourth song is called "The Pot" and I was very impressed by Keenan's voice alone so distorted from the falsetto, it doesn't even seem like him anymore, but the song works very well, indeed, and shortly after good Maynard resumes his rough tones with force and yells "You must have been... high, high!". Truly an excellent song. The fifth track, "Lipan Conjuring", named after a Native American tribe, is very short and almost entirely instrumental, with Maynard mumbling something nonsensical under a persistent jingling. Interesting is the sixth composition, also divided into two parts ("Lost Keys(Blame Hoffmann)" and "Rosetta Stoned"). The first is entirely instrumental, Chancellor's bass composes some very simple chords with a siren in the background, and indeed towards the end of the song there is a conversation between a doctor and a nurse about a problematic patient who doesn't want to talk to anyone. Under the doctor's insistent request (who as his last line says to the patient: "Tell me everything...") start the acidic notes of "Rosetta Stoned", the longest song on the album which turns out to be a very rough track but truly enjoyable in its rarefied beauty.

I have little time and still some things to say, so I skip the analysis of the seventh song (divided into "Intension" and "Right in Two") to analyze the eighth and final track. You surely have noticed that I haven't delved much into the songs on the album, and I feel very guilty for this, forgive me really, I'm sorry, but I had a reason. This reason goes by the name of twenty-three or, as the Latins said, "Viginti Tres". Honestly, I don't consider it a song, but a life choice: you either like it or you don't. And I like it, very much even. It's not a song, as mentioned before: rather, it's an assemblage of inarticulate sounds, very distant, and that come closer, and then go back away, and then come forward again, for five minutes. The first time after listening to it I said to myself: "What the hell is this crap?". The second time I was already in delirium. These sounds are unclassifiable: to me, they initially seemed produced by the beating of a sheet metal, then like in "10,000 Days- Wings Pt 2" a distant thunderstorm, then again a breath. The answer left me astonished: it's the noise produced by the simultaneous closing and opening of a heart patient's heart's systole and diastole, which indeed is in coronary crisis. Truly genius, there are almost no words to describe it...

Final curiosities, because the album is perfect: "Lost Keys" is dedicated to an Austrian scientist, Albert Hoffmann, who first discovered the virtues of LSD (and this reinforces possible doubts stating the Tool's intake of LSD for composing their lyrics). Finally, and I didn't know this and hadn't heard it, even "Viginti Tres" has its own lyrics, smothered among the noise of systoles, four lines you can read here next to ("Una Infinitas/ Abominatio Nascitur Autumno/ Hic est tuum temptamen quod temptat tua potentia/ Viginti Tres gradus ad summam potestatem"). I don’t know what the hell it means, translate it yourself........