Blair released the April 2011 newsletter on Toolband/Army, and it looks like this month is a return to form of sorts. I discusses mainly the Royal Wedding and also touches on Tool‘s progress:
Q: “Hey, Can you tell me what the new Tool album sounds like?”
A: Well, so far, it sounds like Stockhausen meets Jimmy Durante. No, actually I haven’t heard any of it yet. I did, however, see the dry erase board the other night, and even took a photo of the incomplete (Tool) arrangement on it, only to be later told by a band member not to post it. I don’t know why, though. It was ambiguous as ever. In fact, any musician would have an easier time deciphering the Voynich manuscript. Even so, I’ll go way out on a limb and predict that the new stuff sounds like… Tool. Or at least it WILL once Maynard adds everything that he does to the equation. For truly, that’s when all the colored scrawls of chord progressions, time signatures, and other abstruse musical notations on the board become the kind of Tool composition you’ve become familiar with.
For those of you without the patience to read Blair’s work, that’s about all you need to know (hidden codes aside).