It takes us long for a reason, but the end result is: we all completely believe in, not just every verse, every chorus, every bar is scrutinized, and that's the result of what you'll hear on this record.
Stylistically, we're trying to push things in different ways, but it always comes out sounding like Tool no matter what we're trying to do.
It kind of renews my faith in humankind that there's long attention spans left out there that can listen to a 12-minute song.
We've never really been susceptible to pressure from anyone from the outside. We've been really good at negating any outside influences. We're really hard on ourselves. The filter that we put upon things qualifying to end up on a Tool record is pretty extreme, so we figure we've got that part of it under control.
We toured for close to three years after 'Undertow' came out, so by the time we started to work on 'AEnima,' we had matured as functional musicians, and that changes your sound completely. Once you have that kind of freedom, an idea will come into your head and you can do it justice.
We try to write things that can be interpreted on lots of different levels. There's not a right way or a wrong way... people can adventure a little.
We've always considered our music to be a healing process. It's our 'tool' to work things out with each other and try to communicate with each other and learn things. And it's good for everyone - us and our audience - to get together.
We got full artistic integrity and autonomy over what we were doing, and that was the main important thing that kept our band alive.
You can equate our music to childbirth. It's brutal and harsh, but there's still a beautiful thing occurring.
Our crowds seem to keep growing whether we put out a record or not, so I feel very lucky to have that support.
It drove me mad not being able to know more about Pink Floyd when I was a little kid. But that's the great thing - there was this mystery behind it, and we couldn't find out enough. It made your mind work, it made you seek after it or try to interpret it. It made you envision or imagine what they were doing.
There are no leftover Tool songs because of the process it takes to compose our songs - the way we hash it out in a room with all three or four of us, that there's tons of riffs and jams and things. But there's no put-together songs that are sitting in the eaves.