Being in Tool has to be annoying sometimes. No matter when they put a new record, no matter who or what the interview is with or about, the topic of new music will inevitably come up. Tool bassist Justin Chancellor has recently been in the "new material when?" crosshairs, answering the question by mentioning the band is creatively moving forward.
Though in a new interview with NME, Chancellor revealed why Tool isn't interested in simply writing and releasing standalone singles. Chancellor notes that Tool is more interested in the overarching picture of an EP or an album, and that standalone singles would only be cool if they ended up forming a full-length record.
"Absolutely. Looking at how things are released and consumed by the public these days, it's more common to release even just a single. That'd be an interesting approach for us because we've always waited until we've created a whole body of work and made it polished and refined and perfect. So it'd be an exciting idea to go ‘Well, every time we finish a song, we could just record that and release it'. That being said, the way that we like to do stuff is to present a whole package with the art and with a theme to it… so an EP would be a good compromise between an album and a single. To get a couple of really juicy tracks together and release them on a shorter version of an album.
"Another idea is to release singles one at a time, then once they're all once we've accumulated to the length of an album we'll put that together in a package and release it as an album. That way you could still have a physical vinyl and do all the artwork and all that stuff.
"I still think that by writing a whole album, you get really deep into the vibe of the piece and it turns into something further reaching and makes your work a little deeper. But for now, it's pretty flexible, which is exciting. As soon as we've got something ready to go, there's a choice of different outlets."
Alternatively, Tool could just pull a Sleep and write one really long song as an EP. They got pretty close with "7empest" and its nearly 16 minute runtime.
