Vicarious - what an album opener. It's a brilliant track with some of my favourite Tool lyrics: "I need to watch things die from a good safe distance
Vicariously, I live while the whole world dies". The lyrics are well complemented by the superb musicianship of Tool that I heard on their 2001 release Lateralus and these are two factors that are consistent throughout the whole album. I am especially a fan of the drumming from Danny Carey, which I found better than the drumming I heard on Lateralus.
On 10,000 Days Tool experiment with some more ambient tracks (mostly in the form of interludes) - an odd although not unheard of path taken in the metal genre, especially that which is considered 'Progressive Metal'. Tool have managed to pull these tracks off very well, and I would certainly like to hear more of this sort of thing. A criticism of Tool has always been a fairly similar slow, built up, heavy, progressive structure in almost all of their songs and with tracks such as Lost Keys and Viginti Tres the show critics that they can do more than this.
Something that I love about Tool is that it is hard to pigeon hole them into any specific genre, they don't really sound like anyone else. With 10,000 Days they continue this tradition and like Alex said, they are a clever band. This is a clever album because of the unusual structure of the music, '6.5/8' time signatures and the experimentation taken by all musicians which combine to make their unique sound. This album is also clever because of the lyrics: "Kangaroo done hung the jury with the innocent" from The Pot and the brilliant Right in Two which looks at the actions of man from the perspective of angels.
One of the things I liked so much about Lateralus was the interesting vocals, the high pitched shouting/screeching on Ticks & Leeches being a personal favourite. Despite there being no more screeching I found the vocals to be on point as usual. I've always thought that the singer could be in Alice in Chains as he is not totally dissimilar to Layne Staley, and I was delighted to find that he was offered to be their vocalist at one point, but he turned it down. Shame.
Unlike the album Lateralus I did find one track that I did not like. That track is 10,000 Days (Wings, Part 2). I honestly found it boring - it's like they've made a song based on all the bad reviews they've gotten. The music is repetitive, and not in a good way, the lyrics are barely audible and there was nothing there to excite the listener. But one bad track on an eleven track album is by no means bad, in fact it's very good. I am certainly looking forward to exploring more of Tool's discography.
4/5
Album Highlights:
Vicarious
The Pot
Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann)
Rosetta Stoned
Right in Two
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