Rocktrospectiva: The Epic "10,000 Days" Turns 20

Released between 28-29 April 2006 in parts of Europe and Australia 1-2 May in the UK and USA, "10,000 Days" was the fourth studio album by US band Tool. It marked the first time since recording 1993's Undertow that the band had worked at Grandmaster and without producer David Bottrill. 10,000 Days spawned three top ten rock singles: "Vicarious", "The Pot", and "Jambi". It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, with first week sales of 564,000 copies. 10,000 Days was Tool's last release for more than a decade; the band would not release their next studio album, Fear Inoculum, until August 30, 2019.

 

Tool recorded the album at O'Henry Sound Studios in Burbank, as well as at The Loft and Grandmaster Studios in Hollywood, California. It was mixed at Bay 7 in North Hollywood, CA and mastered at Gateway Mastering Studios in Portland, Maine.

 

Guitarist Adam Jones employed various recording techniques for the album, including a "pipe bomb mic" (a guitar pickup mounted inside a brass cylinder), and a talk box guitar solo on the song "Jambi." Drummer Danny Carey operated many of the sound effects on the interlude tracks on the album using electronic drums called Mandalas. 10,000 Days has a heavier sound than its predecessor, largely because of the influence of avant-garde metal band Fantômas, who toured with Tool before the writing process.

 

The title 10,000 Days is thought to refer to the orbital period of the planet Saturn (the actual time period is 10,759 days). According to singer Maynard James Keenan, the Saturn return is "the time in your twenty eighth, twenty ninth year when you are presented the opportunity to transform from whatever your hang-ups were before to let the light of knowledge and experience lighten your load, so to speak, and let go of old patterns and embrace a new life." Keenan expected that the songs composed would "chronicle that process, hoping that my gift back would be to share that path and hope that I could help somebody get past that spot." The title 10,000 Days additionally refers to the amount of time that Maynard's mother, Judith Marie Gridley, was paralyzed.

 

In an interview, Alex Grey, who worked on the illustrations for the 10,000 Days and Lateralus covers, said that many of his artworks for Tool have been based on and influenced by the visionary journeys of a brew called ayahuasca. He described the 10,000 Days cover as "a blazing vision of an infinite grid of Godheads during an ayahuasca journey", and also talked about the Lateralus cover in a similar fashion. Grey stated in another interview when making the 10,000 Days cover that it depicts visions received during a DMT trip.

 

The album received generally favorable reviews, albeit with less enthusiasm than previous Tool albums. Most critics praised the album as another example of Tool's musicianship.  Critics who gave 10,000 Days a relatively low score questioned the merits of its ambient interludes, which Tool have also used on their previous releases. However, the album received a Grammy Award in 2006 for Best Recording Package. That same year, the song "Vicarious" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. In 2008, 10,000 Days garnered another Grammy nomination when "The Pot" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance. 

 

Other reviews praised the album for re-embracing of the epic-length rock songs found at the roots of early heavy metal, while others called the album as probably the most engagingly brilliant heavy metal album that'll be released on a major label all year.

 

10,000 Days Track List:  

 

1. Vicarious

2. Jambi

3. Wings For Marie (Pt 1)

4. 10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)

5. The Pot

6. Lipan Conjuring

7. Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann)

8. Rosetta Stoned

9. Intension

10. Right In Two

11. Viginiti Tres