Tool singer Maynard James Keenan says fans have no reason to continue blaming him for the delay in the release of the band's new album.
The busy vintner and vocalist says his work on the long-awaited forthcoming Tool album has been done for some time.
"Update - final vocals tracks MONTHS ago," Keenan wrote in a Tweet sent Friday, apparently in response to an earlier thread in which a fan openly wished the singer was close to laying down his parts.
Keenan continued, adding that he was unsure whether his band mates were finished recording the instruments and doing any overdubs that might be necessary. Once recording is complete, the band will enter the "long process of mixing."
He added that this year he's looking forward to more U.S. and European tour dates with A Perfect Circle. He's also plotting more Puscifer releases for 2020, and more news from his Caduceus Cellars.
Keenan has long pushed back — albeit unsuccessfully — against the sentiment among Tool fans that he's responsible for the lengthy gap between albums.
The singer has said in the past that delays by his band mates in the composition of the music for the album is what set back the record for so many years.
While he is indeed busy with his various non-Tool projects, he's suggested that bandmates Adam Jones, Justin Chancellor and Danny Carey suffered from a combination of writer's block and revisionism over pressure associated with the band's fifth full-length studio album.
With every Tool album, Keenan's lyrics and vocals are the last element of composition. The singer says that because the instrumental tracks kept being revised, he had to rewrite his parts multiple times.
Keenan said last year that when he checked in with Jones, Chancellor and Carey in late-2017, they were still revising the music. That motivated him to reconvened with Billy Howerdel to complete some long-gestating ideas for A Perfect Circle and what became that band's acclaimed fourth studio album, Eat the Elephant.
But apparently APC's world tour has not drastically affected Tool's progress. The band appears to still be recording.
Jones has been the most forthcoming via Instagram with Tool updates from the studio with producer Joe Barresi. Since he recently shared a photo of Carey laying down keyboard tracks, it's safe to assume "the long process of mixing" to which Keenan referred has not yet begun.
It seems Tool has quite a ways to go until the album is ready.
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