10,000 DAYS

To skip over LATERALUS straight to 10,000 DAYS was a risk for me considering the ratings of the two albums. I loved plenty of songs from the other Tool album I've heard so far (AENIMA), yet I felt the album as a whole was patchy and too fillery. So, judging from a first-glance look at the tracks, it seems as if most filler is filtered out.

''Lipan Conjuring'' and ''Lost Keys'' actually work at creating beautiful atmospheres instead of sounding like throwaways meant to pad the length of the album. ''Lost Keys'' actually sounds like a song Tool would normally write. In contrast, we never needed ''Viginti Trees''; it's a noise piece at the end of the album that is simply a time-waster. I'm used to this technique from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, but it's still unnecessary no matter what artist tries it.

The rest of the tunes are Tool tunes as you would expect had you heard any Tool songs before this. Even with only one album of experience, the parallels are astonishing (good and bad). I swear ''Right in Two'' is a rewrite of ''Jimmy'' with one beat added to it even if I really enjoy ''Right in Two''. ''Vicarious'' and ''Rosetta Stoned'' are two other good tracks I swear I've heard before also. I get this innate sense throughout the whole album.

That is until we have the ''Wings for Marie'' segment. It's a very haunting, building, brooding piece that relies very much on the psychedelic part of Tool's sound much more so than the metal, though outbursts come and go. Everything about this epic just seems right to me, and add that to Maynard Keenan's most moving vocal performance to date (I believe he wrote the tune as a tribute to his mother; the emotion shows). ''Intension'' has similarly good soundscapes to it, but not quite up to the epic's standards.

I can understand the agony of many Tool fans back in 2006 that felt like they were served the same burger and fries over again. If Tool worked new sounds into their own, I honestly can't detect any of them. So, I will say that 10,000 DAYS is a lot like AENIMA; it has its own unique sound with plenty of great moments, but this time instead of too much filler, there's too much déjà vu.