Tool: Danny Carey, Adam Jones, Justin Chancellor, Maynard James Keenan.

Recording information: O'Henry Studios, Burbank, California.

To its legion of fans, everything the band Tool does is an event, but the elaborate plan behind their sporadic release schedule--roughly five years, on average, between albums--is due primarily to the time and effort the band packs into each successive effort. To title their fourth album 10,000 DAYS, then, isn't as much an exaggeration as it would seem. Tool are America's most consummate mainstream perfectionists, revitalizing progressive rock to the grandeur of its '70s heyday, but updated with technocratic tension and existential dread not known to previous generations. Perhaps it's the development of more musical genres at the turn of the millennium, but it's also Tool's ability to take what is needed from each and leave the florid excesses behind, forming a seething gray core of angst and release across epic-length songs that are as accessible as they are complex. The material on 10,000 DAYS provides typically thought-provoking grist for the band's lyrical handwringing ("Vicarious" tackles reality television as the bane of culture; "Wings for Marie" is a two-part suite on the death of vocalist Maynard James Keenan's mother), and is as musically engaging as ever, finding the band at their most powerful since 1996's AENIMA.

What the critics say…

Rolling Stone (p.92) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "Singer Maynard Keenan's operatic vocals, alternately simmering and shrill, are more personal and less pretentious than ever before."
Rolling Stone (p.108) - Ranked #38 in Rolling Stone's "The Top 50 Albums Of 2006" -- "'Vicarious' and 'The Pot' are packed with clever twists on instant-hit-single kicks…"
Spin (p.85) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "They've moved past metal to become their own genre….Keenan hisses a mysterious, gnomic gospel…"
Alternative Press (p.196) - "10,000 DAYS packs enough beauty, heartache and triumph that it will be dissected, studied and envied by younger bands for years to come."
Kerrang (Magazine) - "[E]pic, gradiose, mysterious and engaging….An album as substantial and challenging as only the great works of art can aspire to be…"
Kerrang (Magazine) (p.68) - Ranked #6 in Kerrang's "20 Greatest Albums of 2006" -- "Self-indulgence never sounded so thrilling."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.104) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[T]here's enough innovation of a musical nature to ensure they need not rely solely on vintage phantasmagoria to capture the imagination."