TOOL's New Album Gets Official Release Date

TOOL's long-awaited new album will arrive on August 30. The band confirmed the release date Tuesday night (May 7) at its concert in Birmingham, Alabama. According to fans who attended the show, a video screen flashed the date "August 30th" before the set's encore. Frontman Maynard James Keenan then encouraged fans to share the news via social media. Not long after, the release date was tweeted out via TOOL's official account (see below).

As it did two nights earlier at the at the Welcome To Rockville festival in Jacksonville, Florida, TOOL performed two new songs, "Descending" and "Invincible", in Birmingham.

Although TOOL has previously played an instrumental version of "Descending" live, Sunday night's concert marked the first performance of the completed song with lyrics and vocals sung by Keenan.

"Descending" and "Invincible" are both expected to appear on TOOL's follow-up to 2006's "10,000 Days" album.

TOOL's new album was reportedly produced by Joe Barresi, and mastered by Bob Ludwig, who previously worked on "10,000 Days". Recording commenced in March 2018, with drummer Danny Carey laying down his tracks first and bassist Justin Chancellor recording his parts next.

Maynard attempted to explain the long gap between TOOL albums in a 2017 interview with "The Joe Rogan Experience". Speaking about his bandmates, the singer said: "Their writing process is so drawn out. And I'm sure there's a lot of reasons why the delay has been long. Their process is very analytical, and I think, at some point, maybe because so much time has gone by from the last album, there has to be a little bit of fear in here. [You think to yourself] 'Is this record gonna be as good as the last one?' The anticipation now is… Now the pressure is huge, so I'm sure there's some of that [that] goes into play."

TOOL is playing a series of U.S. shows this month before heading to Europe. The band is also scheduled to perform at the Aftershock festival in Sacramento in October.