10,000 DAYS

The only psychodramatic occult concept album to include a repeated refrain about shitting the bed, Tool's 10,000 Days finds the band travelling further down the increasingly progressive trajectory suggested by Aenima and especially Lateralus. The evolution in the band's sound is a bit more gentle than the quantum leap between Undertow and Aenima, or even the jump from Aenima to Lateralus, but the album should be pleasing to anyone who's fond of Tool's progressive direction - though if you were more intrigued by the alternative metal style of Undertow (or the alternative-progressive fusion of Aenima) you're not going to see a return to that here, and sometimes the band's noodlings end up becoming experimental for experimental's sake rather than going anywhere interesting.