10,000 Days is the fourth studio album by the rock band Tool. The album was released by Tool Dissectional and Volcano Entertainment on April 28, 2006 in parts of Europe, April 29, 2006 in Australia, May 1, 2006 in the United Kingdom, and on May 2, 2006 in North America.
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 10 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.
The album was awarded a double platinum certification by the RIAA. 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.
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 (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.”
Tracklist:
- Vicarious
- Jambi
- Wings for Marie (Pt 1)
- 10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)
- The Pot
- Lipan Conjuring
- Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann)
- Rosetta Stoned
- Intension
- Right in Two
- Viginti Tres
The compact disc packaging for 10,000 Days consists of a thick cardboard bound booklet partly covered by a flap holding a pair of stereoscopic eyeglasses, which can be used to view a series of images inside.
Viewed with the glasses, the artwork produces an illusion of depth and three dimensionality. Alex Grey, who created a majority of the album art for Lateralus and its accompanying video Parabola, reprised his role for 10,000 Days.
The CD face itself is decorated with stylized eyes, arranged in a seemingly logarithmic spiral toward the center (adapted from a previous Alex Grey painting, “Collective Vision”).
As with Tool‘s other albums, the lyrics are not printed within the artwork; vocalist Maynard James Keenan has instead released the lyrics online.
On May 5, 2006, the band’s official webmaster hinted that “the four individual photos of the band members can be used as the pieces of a kind of puzzle,” but the puzzle and its meaning “will just be another nut to crack.”
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.
Tool
Maynard James Keenan: vocals
Adam Jones: guitars, sitar, talkbox on “Jambi”
Justin Chancellor: bass, additional guitars
Danny Carey: drums, percussion, tabla
Guest musicians
Lustmord: weather effects on “10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)”
Bill McConnell: vocals on “Lipan Conjuring”
Pete Riedling: voice of “Doctor Watson” on “Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann)”
Camella Grace: voice of “Nurse” on “Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann)”
Production
Joe Barresi: engineering and mixing (credited as “Evil Joe Barresi”)
Adam Jones: art direction
Alex Grey: illustrations
Bob Ludwig: mastering
Mackie Osborne: design, layout
Travis Shinn: photography
