A couple of Fourtheye readers today pointed me to a new Youtube video of more Tool footage from the Undertow recording sessions.  Features some more footage with Henry Rollins, as well as a stack of drum tracking and general playing around. 

Also Maynard kissing a parrot.  Good times!

I forgot to mention in the August update that you can listen to a new remix of The Humbling River on the Puscifer site.  It’s the second track after Rocket Man.  Sounds good, but personally I’m ready for some new stuff rather than just remixes…

Toolshed also had an update recently.  Not only have then just turned 15 (congratulations!) but Kabir spoke with Danny who confirmed Tool are back songwriting. I’ve heard pretty much the same thing as well, so it looks like things are moving in the right direction for now!

An email found it’s way into my inbox today carrying the following pictures for a Ultimate Edition of Tool’s Salival.  According to the packaging, it contains the usual Salival stuff, as well as the Vicarious, Schism and Parabola clips.  Funny that it mentions “Includes over 70 minutes” and then at the bottom says “duration: Approx. 58 min.”

No word from Tool about this at all, so I imagine it’s extremely likely this is a bootleg of some kind, so buyer beware…

Blair has released the July 2010 Newsletter on Toolband, and it’s a short one.  It briefly discusses the tour, their plans to continue writing and a four seeded peanut:

I reached into a bag of peanuts, grabbed a handful, and upon cracking open the FIRST ONE, was amazed to see that it contained four perfectly formed peanuts. Immediately it hit me that this was a most auspicious sign – a harbinger of good things to come, as well as a signal from above that the unity experienced by the band members during the tour would carry over once it was finished, Indeed, I was confident that they would get right back to writing new material.

He also mentioned that they will not tour again for at least six months, so there should be plenty of time to do what they gotta do.

And now for some speculation on my part – the mention of six months before the tour may be significant.  In about six months time the Australian summer music festival season will be in full swing, and perhaps we may see Tool featuring on that?  The Soundwave festival lineup gets announced this week, and while I think a festival tour from Tool is reasonably unlikely, stranger things have happened (such as the recent tour), and recent hints at needing a passport in previous newsletters could be a clue…

This time from Kenneth’s collection:

Yet another interview with Adam today, this time with Crave Online.  As with the previous interviews, it largely focuses on the upcoming art gallery, however Adam does talk about the tour, the setlist, Maynards voice and the writing process for the new album:

CraveOnline: I know you’re on tour now, but can you tell us anything about the new Tool record?

Adam Jones: We’re writing, we’re writing. It’s going a little slow. We’re trying to get our feet wet, just basically the three of us. Maynard’s been busy with his wine and his other band. That’s usually how it is – we’ll write and write, and then he comes in last and starts putting stuff in. It works, it is what it is and it works. It’s good. I love it.

I can’t really tell you any direction we’re taking or anything like that at this point. It just feels like the same as every time we get into it. We just write for ourselves, and when we’re happy with it we say alright, let’s go into the studio. I really like the process with those guys because we don’t worry about what worked on the last record or what’s selling or the single. You just write. You rip your guts out and… yeah. I’m so happy where I’m at and what I do with those guys. It just feels so good right now to be out on tour.

CraveOnline: How do you keep it fresh on tour? How do you build on these songs you’ve been playing for so many years at this point?

Adam Jones: This tour has been great because we’re actually doing a different setlist than we’ve been doing in the past. We’re getting older, and Maynard has trouble sometimes singing the older songs, from back when he was young and screaming his fucking head off all the time. His vocal chords are getting older and he can’t really do what he used to do all in a row in a string of back to back shows. So we’ve changed up the set a little bit, which feels really good. Once we actually get together and start playing, it’s so great. It’s so great hanging out with the guys and playing the songs. It comes back to keeping it fresh.

Sometimes in the middle of a song we’ll start jamming, or go off on some tangent of a song and come back. That’s a great way to keep it fresh too. Also we keep adding to our show, we put a lot of money back into the show because we want it to be stimulating. We want all the senses to be on overdrive. More lights, more visuals, more lasers, more soundscapes. That’s what I would want in a show.

CraveOnline: Sounds like we shouldn’t hold our breath for a Tool acoustic tour anytime soon.

Adam Jones: Um…. I don’t think so. (laughs)

A good read!

Adam must have a few things to get off his chest at the moment as there is another interview with him, this time with Erin Broadly of LA Weekly.  Once again it’s largely about is artwork rather than Tool.

It also has this amusing anecdote:

Adam Jones: Oh, absolutely. I’ve got a funny story for you. Tool was in Denver at Red Rocks and it was the second show we played. Those shows went great; it was really fun. But I was trying to hook up with Buzz from the Melvins because they were playing a show at the Ogden Theater and I realized we’re not going to make the show, they’re going to be done. I was like, "Hey, I’ll try to get out as fast as possible to see you guys," and they said, "Ok, we’ll wait for you." So I was telling everyone, "I really wanna go see the Melvins," and they said I could do a runner after the show — they’d get me right off stage, into a van, and get me out of there. [Laughs] I jump in the van after our show with Maynard and there are two cop cars. They put on their lights so we had this police escort going 80 or 90 miles an hour down the freeway to go see Buzz from the Melvins.

[Laughs] My god.

Adam Jones: [Laughs] It was the most rock cliche moment of my life. It was really funny. Those guys were all laughing at me. I told Buzz and Buzz goes, "Yeah, I had one of those once but they took me to jail."

Thanks to ebackwardse for the tip.

A new interview with Adam popped up today where he speaks with Rick Florino from Artist Direct.  He talks about his art, his involvement in the recent X-Files comic and the idea of there being a Tool movie:

If the Tool story were to be made into a movie, who would be the perfect director for it, other than yourself of course?
(Adam) Wow, if it was made for TV, it would probably be Roger Corman. If it was a feature movie, it would probably have to be that German director Rainer Werner Maria Fassbinder, and it’d have to be in German with subtitles [Laughs]. I’m being positive but my life in Tool is exactly like Spinal Tap meets a Shakespearian play.

So Spinal Tap meets Hamlet?
Exactly, but in a good way [Laughs]. I really love being in Tool. I love what we do and the result of everything. There’s a lot of dysfunction but, at the end of the day, it’s amazing.

Worth mentioning is that some of his art will be showing at the Alternative Press exhibition at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in L.A, which opens on the 9th of July.  According to the interview the piece on display will be the sculpture used for the Peach cover.

Thanks to Sampson for the tip!

According the Alternative Tentacles website Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine will be supporting Tool on their San Francisco and Sacramento dates later this month.   Check them out, they’re not bad, though personally I prefer Jello with the Melvins.  Perhaps we’ll see some more Dead Kennedy covers…

Thanks to Tooldude for the tip.

Tour posters are flying at me thick and fast, both from readers and from NOMAD, the guys who print them.  Below is a selection of pics I’ve been sent so far!

Click to embiggen!