The Boss wrote:Here's another question: How likely are they to play anything new during this tour? Do they even have complete songs written yet?
I honestly have no idea where they are at aside from what Blair has said on Toolband. I have no reason to doubt that it's largely written from an instrumental viewpoint and what mostly remains is further input from Maynard. I'm optimistic they will hit the studio this year, but then again I've felt good about this for the last 3 years.
As with any tour, I suspect the chance of us hearing anything new (aside from the odd noodling between songs) are virtually nil.
The Boss wrote:Why, exactly, are they touring?
For the money I expect. Last year they were made a very good offer to play Ozzfest in Japan, and the rest of the tours dates followed that. I suspect this current tour is a similar arrangement with the El Tajin festival. I doubt the band woke up one morning and thought "fuck it, let's tour Mexico". On top of this, festival bookings can be made quite far in advance. There's some chance they expected to have an album done by now, committed to the festival and are now in a place where contractually they need to play, even though there is no new material.
It's rarely worth doing just one show, so it turns out to be a good chance to squeeze in a few other gigs as well. As much as we like to make it about the money though, I believe Tool are a band that actually does enjoy touring, and while for us it's easy to be cynical, for them it's most likely a fun exercise.
