An album review written by: Lee Sonogan

(2006) 75:25 mins/Progressive metal

“Daylight dims leaving cold fluorescence
Difficult to see you in this light
Please forgive this bold suggestion
Should you see your maker’s face tonight
Look him in the eye
Look him in the eye, and tell him
I never lived a lie, never took a life
But surely saved one, hallelujah
It’s time for you to bring me home”. – 10,000 days (Wings Pt. 2), Tool

10,000 Days is the fourth studio album by American rock band Tool. With first-week sales of 564,000 copies. By the end of 2007, the album had sold 2.5 million copies worldwide, and was awarded a Platinum certification by the RIAA. The album would become the band’s last release in over a decade. The experimentation of their music style pays off well in the album.

In an interview, Alex Grey, who worked on the illustrations for the 10,000 Days and Lateralus covers, said that many of his artworks for Tool have been based off and influenced by the visionary journeys of a brew called ayahuasca. He described the 10,000 Days cover as “a blazing vision of an infinite grid of Godheads during an ayahuasca journey”, and also talked about the Lateralus cover in a similar fashion. Grey stated in another interview when making the 10,000 Days cover that it depicts visions received during a DMT trip, the main chemical ingredient in ayahuasca.

On April 14, 2006, a 30-second clip from ‘Vicarious’ aired on Pittsburgh radio station ‘105.9 The X’. Subsequently, the entire song was leaked in WAV format when a private FTP server used to distribute the song to radio stations was left open without password protection for a few minutes. The entire album was later leaked to the Internet, despite heavy security and strict conditions regarding media previews. Exactly how the album came to be leaked is unknown. Some rumours had led fans to believe that the band leaked it to spite their record company.

Tracklist on this album:

• Vicarious
• Jambi
• Wings for Marie (Pt 1)
• 10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)
• Rosetta Stoned
• Intension
• Right in two
• Viginti Tres

Here are some facts about their songs on the album. ‘Marie’ is the middle name of Keenan’s deceased mother, Judith Marie Garrison. As Keenan explains in his commentary on A Perfect Circle’s aMOTION DVD, Judith suffered a stroke that left her partially paralyzed and wheelchair-bound. The two-part song, ‘Wings for Marie’, is an opus dedicated to her. The length of time between the paralysis and her death was 27 years or approximately 10,000 days. In the Guitar World interview, it was confirmed that the title of ‘The Pot’ was a reference to an idiomatic term for hypocrisy i.e., the pot calling the kettle black.

The Rosetta Stone is an archaeological artefact of carved granite found in Egypt. The tablet was used as a key to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is also a quick second language learning system. ‘Viginti Tres’ is Latin for ‘twenty-three’ – the number has a lot of historical, mathematical, and occult significance. ‘Jambi’ is an Indonesian Province in Sumatra, which was once part of a powerful kingdom with a rich sultan who lived an opulent lifestyle. The setting reinforces the message that family and friends are more important than wealth.

At first, I did not enjoy Tools sound. Later on, in life, it grew on me. Now I can or have to listen to the whole album in order. Each song is a one of a kind type of sound and you can listen to it over and over again. Pushing the boundaries is really beautiful once you get into each song played. I recommend this album to all fans of metal and looking for a chiller sound with heavy metal rhythms.

“Strapped down to my bed
Feet cold and eyes red
I’m out of my head
Am I alive? Am I dead.
Sunkist and Sudafed
Gyroscopes and infrared
Won’t help. I’m brain dead
Can’t remember what they said
God damn, shit the bed”. – Rosetta stoned, Tool

8.6/10

https://ungroovygords.com/