Tool
Fear Inoculum
Digital
Label: RCA Records
Release date: August 30, 2019

I’m not going to lie and tell you that I’m a diehard fan of TOOL. Sure, I really got pretty hot and heavy into the band’s 1993 debut LP, Undertow — Beavis & Butt-Head can have that effect on a young mind. Plus, it’s a fantastic freaking album that holds up really well even to this day. But I only got into subsequent releases on a marginal basis. I listened to them if I could find them legally without paying for them. And considering their last studio album released was 13 years ago, I couldn’t even tell you what that legal method was. Probably CD loaners from friends or the library.

But this year’s Fear Inoculum was one that my circle of music peeps was very heavily anticipating. This includes my IRL friends, my co-workers, my online friends… we were all looking forward to it very, very much.

The band Tool is currently out on a west coast tour of the United States, but the LA alt metal band hasn’t released a new studio album since 2006’s 10,000 Days. Last summer, the band said they expected their follow-up to 10,000 Days to be released in early 2014, but as the year heads into Spring, there’s still no new album.

Now, Crave has the scoop that the long-awaited fifth studio album is finally complete, according to guitarist Adam Jones, who reportedly said that the new album is “100% done.” The guitarist reportedly said this at a pre-show VIP meet & greet, where he revealed that a new release should be expected later this year. There was also a mention about “different time signatures than their previous work,” which could signify a departure from their classic sound.

A lot of memories that I have from my college days can be tied to certain records, and this is one of them. So, it thrilled me when I saw that Amazon has put A Perfect Circle‘s Thirteenth Step up as one of their $5 MP3 album deals for this month. This is one of my favorite albums of all time. When I’m feeling a little low, or if I want to just chill out for a while, I go to this one.

The official website for Gibson guitars has released what they perceive to be the top 50 metal songs of all time. Gibson.com’s writers and editors worked on compiling the list over several weeks, releasing 10 entries at a time, and recently released the top 10, which declared the number one metal song to be “Master of Puppets” by Metallica.

In some ways, the number one spot for Metallica is fitting, considering 2011 is the 25th anniversary of the release of their Master of Puppets album. Having said that though, metalheads are notorious for having fierce and strong opinions about what they consider to be their “top songs,” on top of their fierce and strong opinions about what bands are or are not even metal.