Tool don’t just make metal, they make alternative metal, art metal and – my personal favourite – math metal. What they don’t make is music that is easy on the listener.
10,000 Days is a monster of a record. Non-fans will feel it takes that long just to get through it. Every track seems to last ten minutes and, given that there are eleven of them, that’s an awful lot of math metal for your euro. Such tenacity is to be admired, as is the luxurious approach to packaging, featuring not just a couple of little magnifying glasses, but stereoscopic lenses. It’ll probably cost them money every time someone buys a copy yet that is essentially how Tool work, art for art’s sake.
If you’re already a fan this will be heaven sent, if you’re not you might just stand back scratching your head. It’s so complicated, so intense and so plain long that there really is no way in. All of which is most probably the way that Tool – and their fans – like it, sitting on the fringes, feeling slightly superior to all of those who don’t get it. And to be honest, I don't.