Tool - 10,000 Days (Album)
» Big Day Out 2007 - Princes Park South, VIC - January 28, 2007
I really wanted to say that this is the best Tool album yet, honestly I did. All else aside, it’d make my job a lot easier – instead of writing my own review I could’ve just copied and pasted some generic praise from other publications and chances are that you, dear reader, would not know the difference. Unfortunately, while I’m okay with plagiarism, I’m not okay with lying, and I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that this is the patchiest Tool album to date.
You’d think the five years that have elapsed since the release of Lateralus would have given them plenty of time to create something a little more consistent – in fact, I’m pretty sure the only reason Tool fans don’t mind waiting so long between albums is because they’re usually presented with something amazing in the end. I guess the next best thing is to just pretend the wait was well worth it, which I’m pretty sure is what most tools are doing.
You know what? It really is hard to accept that a great band have made a mediocre album. From time to time I’m struck with an irrational fear that I simply haven’t got it yet; that immediately after I submit this review I’ll suddenly realise that this is actually the best Tool album ever – nay, the best album of all time - and then have to spend the rest of my life being that jerk who didn’t like 10, 000 Days. Nobody wants to be the guy who got it wrong.
Sadly, every listen just seems to reinforce my conviction that Tool have, to a certain extent, lost it. Gone is the venom of their earlier work, replaced by tepid interludes and scattered crescendos. Gone are the amazing rhythmic olympics of Lateralus, replaced by …well, not a hell of a lot.
After opening track Vicarious – the album’s first single – Tool just stall for time until the dying throes of the title track four songs later. On previous efforts, Tool have been masters of creating tension and anticipation, but there’s very little to build up to here - even when they up the ante for fifth track The Pot (one of the only songs that contains anything remotely resembling a hook) they don’t really hit their stride. It just seems like they ran out of intensity after so many years of ‘pushing boundaries’ - the album just peters out after the relatively climactic eighth track Rosetta Stoned, and it even manages to draw that out. If Lateralus was the bang, this is the debris settling.
10, 000 Days’ lacklustre quality has nothing to do with production or arrangement; those elements are practically identical to Tool’s previous releases. It’s the quality of the songs that has suddenly plummeted: it just doesn’t feel like they care all that much, which is a kick in the guts. It’s like all their passion went into the album’s artwork (which is admittedly amazing, almost enough reason to buy the album), and as a great man once said, good frames won’t save bad paintings – not even if they’re the frames of 3D glasses.
