Tool fans will be very thankful for the news that the group begin tracking their new album over the Thanksgiving holiday. The band's latest newsletter had there humorous details: At a time when the headlines are dominated by frenzied Amish beard clippers, whooping cough and Occupy Wall Street (Forget that - how about Occupy the Playboy Mansion, all you 69 per centers!), rather than discuss the thawing permafrost, Sandusky, or baffling Gamma ray bursts, how about some exciting TOOL-RELATED NEWS... That's right - while most of you were still digesting your Thanksgiving bird, highly acclaimed recording engineer and producer (not to mention vintage candy aficionado!) 'Evil' Joe Barresi was seated at the mixing console in the band's home studio - the only evidence of the holiday being a bowl of pumpkin-pie cheesecake Kit Kats that was placed there by one of the girls from Tool's business management. Believe it! Hours after your cranberry sauce was still jiggling, members of the band had gathered at the loft to begin tracking.
For these VOLTO! sessions, the place looked like a gear-junkie's wet-dream, and with the 'evil' one deftly punching in bars on the remote control, as the night wore on, song after song -in all their musical complexity - were being captured on tape (Yes, tape! For this record, a Studer A827 "Gold Edition" analog tape recorder had been trucked in.) By the time of my much-anticipated arrival on Tuesday, almost all of the tracks were finished, as were the holiday confections. With the loft now littered with empty Tommy's burger wrappers and spent cans of Red Bull, as guitar riffs processed through an antique Echoplex wailed over the KRKs, stories were being told about Danny recently making a daring escape in his orange Lambo from Mastros steakhouse in Beverly Hills (where a side of lobster mashed potatoes goes for $30.00) - the entire thing caught by TMZ's cameras... although the crowd cheers are probably still lying on the proverbial cutting room floor. And now, with you being down to your last leftover turkey sandwich, with but a few overdubs to add, you can bet that the boys will be back at it tonight... Read more of the fun tale on the band's site
