[Review] Tool: 10,000 Days

I've reviewed a ton of hip-hop lately, so here's something pretty darn different. 

Just so you know, I enjoy hard, hard rock and metal.  I love the raw emotion (usually rage or sorrow) that the genre can occasionally display with both effectiveness and sincerity.  For the most part, this does NOT include nü-metal (Trapt, Papa Roach, etc).  I'm talking about more traditional metal: old Metallica, Pantera, Helmet, and the like.

Tool is the Rush of metal bands; all four members are incredibly talented, they write songs that can take 8-10 minutes to play through their entirety, and Maynard James Keenan just might possess the best voice rock and roll has heard since Freddie Mercury (if not the best rock voice of all time).  Every single Tool album has showcased at least one track that made me sit back and say "Wow.  Never heard anything like that before."

Well 10,000 Days is Tool's fifth studio album (if you include the Opiate EP).  And it's their first that doesn't inspire that thought.

If this were Tool's first album, it would sound awesome, cutting-edge and different. But at this point, it's impossible to not look at this album through the lens of their previous effors.  To my ear, we've heard all of this before - there are even a few tracks that blatantly bring to mind specific, previous Tool songs.  The concept of the album is excellent, and the sentiment is sweet: Maynard's mother had a stroke that left her half-paralyzed and in a wheelchair...and the time between her stroke and her passing away was 27 years, or 10,000 days.  There are two songs on the album specifically dedicated to her ["Wings For Marie, Part 1 and "10,000 Days (Wings, Pt. 2)"]; the lyrics to these tracks are excellent, and present the freshest material on the disc. 

I keep thinking that it might be the slower, introspective music -- but I know it's more than that.  The band's music simply hasn't grabbed me this time around.  A re-tread of Undertow or Aenima would have had a similar effect.  Don't misunderstand -- by no means is 10,000 Days a bad album.  Tool doesn't really make bad albums.  It's just one that I find difficult to engage, even after several months, having been spoiled by mind-blowing, revolutionary rhythms and sounds on previous releases.  I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that Tool has run out of things to say; it just might be that they are running out of new and innovative melodies to say them with.  

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