[OANST]

Okay people, the new Tool album kicks arse. Don't listen to it once and bash it.
Tool didn't stand a chance of pleasing everyone this time around, as they went in such an extremely technical, advanced direction with Lateralus. If they had gone further into that, people would have said they couldn't get into it. If they had done the same, people wouldn't have liked it being similar. They went a bit different, and people say it's not good. They didn't have a chance of 'winning' this time around, so don't look at 10,000 Days like that, because it is amazing in its own right.

The problem that I had with the album is that it sounded like they WERE trying to please everyone. It sounded like they were trying to make a record that went back to the reasons why people liked them in the first place. The first problem with doing that is that you will most certainly fail. The second problem is that you should never sit down and say "Okay. This is what this album is going to sound like". When you do that you lose your objectivity and you also lose a lot of the soul that your music once had. The album sounded forced. It sounded like they were just trying way too hard to be SOMETHING instead of just BEING.