TOOL Has ‘Tons Of Material’ For Possible Follow-Up To ‘Fear Inoculum’, Says Drummer

Tool 2019
Photo credit: Travis Shinn

TOOL drummer Danny Carey says that the band has “tons of material” for a possible follow-up to last month’s Fear Inoculum.

When asked by Metal Hammer what future holds for TOOL, Carey responded: “It’s hard to say. We’re going to tour on this probably for two or three years at least, I imagine. It feels like what we’ve done on every album, and then I guess we’ll see where we’re sitting after that.

“My hope is we get in and knock out another record,” he continued. We have tons of material. It’s not going to take 12 years, or if it does, I’ll probably be so old I probably can’t pick up my sticks any more! But my hope is we’ll do another record and just keep moving forward.”

According to Carey, Fear Inoculum also marks the end of a five-album deal for the band, which will allow the band to do “whatever we want now.”

 “There’s more motivation. The carrot on the stick has gotten larger because now we’ll be free agents – we don’t have to deal with a record company or if we do, we deal with it on our terms, because we can do whatever we want now. 

He adds: “This is the last record of a five-album deal, so that’s a good feeling and I hope that will be motivational in the writing processes.”

In a recent interview with BBC Radio 1’s Rock Show With Daniel P CarterTOOL frontman Maynard James Keenan talked about the new album delay and finally realizing it’s the time to get something done.

“I think a lot of it [was] just that age where you want it to be right and we’ve had some success in the past and the fear of this thing coming out and not being accepted — the fear that it’s not as good as it can be — that can be detrimentally crippling,” Maynard said.

“Probably in if I had to ‘psychology 101’ [it], I would have to say, ‘Well, yeah, that’s why it would take 13 years to write something, because you’re paranoid that it’s not gonna be the best that it can be and then you second guess every single step that you make,’ when it was probably good enough — I shouldn’t say good enough — it was fantastic eight years ago.

He continued: “But then the crippling second guessing of yourself sets in, and that psychology and that spiral you get in, it can be extremely daunting. And you can actually not even feel it happening.

“All of a sudden you wake up and it’s 13 years later. The hard part is accepting the fact that maybe you’re not as important as you think you are and you should probably just get on with it.”