The album title refers to the time between when Keenan’s mother became paralyzed in the 1980s and when she died, in 2003, an experience that inspires some of Keenan’s most poignant lyrics yet (“10,000 days in the fire is long enough/You’re going home”). problems and her death in Wings For Marie and 10,000 Days. work and always last on the list of songs I want to see. Singer Maynard Keenan’s operatic vocals, alternately simmering and shrill, are more personal and less pretentious here than ever before. We rank Tools five studio albums, one EP and one live album. The web of shifting dynamics and time signatures sounds so primal, so visceral, that any lyrical message seems incredibly important. And though 10,000 Days was indeed a more accessible version of Tool, one more similar to the alt-rock and alt-metal bands you could still hear on the radio in 2006, it also had songs like the 17. On the opener, “Vicarious,” the quartet reprises its primary formula, which dates back to the 1993 debut, Undertow: Each player keeps his own syncopated version of the central groove until they unite for the first of many spine-tingling crescendos - then, just as sharply, the foursome de-crescendos into a brooding instrumental jam, as the rhythmic and melodic lines meander and cross until the next explosion. The release is filled with epic songs (the 11-track disc clocks in at nearly 80 minutes) based on hypnotically complex riffs and anguished vocals, and cloaked in typically oblique artwork. 10,000 Days, the bands latest album, will surely inspire more of the same. On 10,000 Days, their fourth album, Tool maintain a level of craftsmanship and virtuosity unparalleled in metal. With the arrival of every new Tool release, the debate is reignited. But the music has such anthemic power that even the most cynical listener can find himself chanting along to lines like “To ascend, you must die!/You must be crucified!” Tool’s dense, often quasi-religious lyrics have always been among the most overwrought in mainstream metal - no small feat.