Tool Bassist Talks New Album: ‘We’re Playing Pretty Much Nonstop’

Tool bassist Justin Chancellor said the band is “playing pretty much nonstop” and “deep into the writing process” on its first album since 2006. Tim Cadiente/Speakeasy

Tool bassist Justin Chancellor said that the band is “deep into the writing process” on its next album in an interview with Bass Player.

“We’ve narrowed things down to big groups of ideas,” Chancellor continued. “For the past few months we’ve been working on one of the newer songs fairly exclusively. We get the gist of it and find the main themes that make up the skeleton between verses and choruses. Then we explore different ways we can depart from that and come back to it and flip it upside down, and take the time to see what else is there. Everyone knows we take our time. We’re really trying to be responsible with ourselves in trying to discover ideas that haven’t been discovered before. It’s kind of an alchemy, how we experiment.”

Tool have not released an album since 2006’s 10,000 Days, marking…