Justin Chancellor Cites the Most Exhausting Question About Tool

Justin Chancellor says it was “more exhausting” when people asked about Tool‘s timeline for the release of Fear Inoculum than any other question. It’s also one that they’re being asked a lot again now that it’s been five years since then.

The band is notorious for taking their time with their releases, as they had a 13-year gap between their fourth album 10,000 Days and its successor Fear Inoculum. It’s essentially become a meme, with people often making jokes about how long it will take them to put out another set of songs.

Heck, we even joined in on the fun before Fear Inoculum came out and made a list titled 13 Amazing Things That Took Less Time Than Tool’s 13-Year New Album.

Multiple members of the group have given updates on Tool’s next release recently, though — Chancellor and Danny Carey — who both denied that the wait will be as long this time around. We are approaching the halfway mark, but who’s counting?

During an interview with Metal Hammer, Chancellor provided some insight as to what it’s like being in the band that gets poked fun at for their unhurried nature.

“Yes, they have started asking [when the next album will be out], but what can you do? We put a little work in before this tour, we gave it a stab for a couple of months,” he said. “We ended up compiling all the ideas we had; normally when we do that we start writing pretty soon after, but we had a lot of stuff coming up, so we didn’t dive all the way in.”

The bassist added that when Tool are finished with their European tour this later year, they’ll get back to work on Fear Inoculum’s follow-up. 

“Danny is 62 now, so there’s no thought of taking 13 years if we’re gonna do it. We’re gonna have to be more efficient, and we’ve been talking of ways that we can do that,” he continued. “Maybe taking a leaf out of how me and Peter work with MTVoid – instead of staring at each other going ‘Come on! Get it out of ya!’ maybe we could do a bit more at home. We’ll see.”

Chancellor was then asked how exhausting it was to constantly be questioned about when Fear Inoculum would come out, especially by the year 2018, in which he replied that it was the most exhausting of anything else they’ve ever been asked.

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“We were all struggling. By that point we were just trying to get to the finish line. We threw everything away at one point, so to get so close, you’re really determined to put the icing on the cake, everyone is trying not to lose their shit. So to those questions, I’d always say, ‘We’re nearly there!’ and then it would be another two years! Haha!”

A few months ago, Carey actually hinted that the band’s next release might be an EP instead of a full album during an interview with Revolver, so we’ll have to sit tight until we have more details about it.