Tool: 10,000 Days

10,000 Days is the fifth installment of Tool's legacy in the musical world. There are many words that I would like to use to describe this album. Mediocre, contrived, lack luster, pedantic, boring - all are words that you won't see from here on out.

When I heard this CD was coming out, I immediately pre-ordered it. I had waited so many years for a new installment of inspirational genius. I needed another fix. Lateralus was just brilliant and it was my favorite. I was hoping that this would continue on that streak.

When I first popped this into my CD-ROM drive, I was expecting to hear something like Lateralus. I wanted to feel the same euphoric transcendental out of body experience with something new. After my initial listen I had felt slighted in some way. This wasn't anything remotely to what I was expecting. It wasn't so much that it was vastly different; it just didn't feel the same. With disappointment in hand, I wasn't sure what to do next. Usually if I don't like a CD I'll just give it away to some poor unsuspecting friend who thinks that monkeys wildly banging on the bongos would make good music.

But I didn't dislike the album as much as I wanted to. I had secretly loved it and was not sure why. I decided to listen to this a few more times. I knew that I needed to realize why I had deceived myself.

Over the next few days I had listened to the album a few more times. Sometimes while I was doing mundane chores, other times was when I was in the middle of doing tedious work related stuff and just needed something to take the edge off. During these moments I had made an important discovery. I had done a little research into the naming scheme of the album and it all became clear to me.

It was epic, epic in a way that was completely different from Lateralus. Lateralus had a lot of hidden mathematical meanings behind it. 10000 days was obviously, in many ways, meant as a tribute to Keenan's mother. You get to see inside the man's head, see how he feels. You can feel him pouring his heart out. It's the moments like that that truly make listening to a piece of art enjoyable.

What I didn't initially like was that I felt the songs seemed too simplistic, lyrically anyway. I understood every syllable uttered as soon as it was said. Usually I need to sit there for a good many days or weeks or even years and reflect on the meanings behind the words. You still need to do that with a couple of the songs, but the majority are straight-forward. For sure they can be thought provoking with the issues that are being sung about, but is this an attempt to appeal to the masses? Probably not, but it's something to remotely consider.

For the average idiot like myself, 10000 days is a fresh feeling. You can sit there and figure out what the songs mean and hold a semi-intelligent conversation with the most astute pedagogue on the issues that are widely being talked about and most likely will always be talked about. You aren't, for a second, sitting there feeling the song, loving it, yet you can't figure out why it gives you the relaxed feeling.

For many people, this potentially can be a love-hate affair. People tend to listen to the words first and the music second, and it's this reason that it will be a love-hate affair.

I personally loved this album and would recommend it to anyone to add to their music collection. It is raw, it is emotional, it is hard, it is melodic, and most importantly, it's Tool.