In a new interview with Mexico’s Summa Inferno, TOOL bassist Justin Chancellor was asked about a possible follow-up to the band’s 2019 album “Fear Inoculum”. He said: “ When we get back from our trip (to Mexico and South America in March) — I think it’s only three weeks we’re gonna be there — but we have already shared with each other a lot of these new ideas, but when we get back, we’re actually gonna dedicate the next three months after that in the studio to organizing our ideas.

“There’s a lot of stages in the process,” Justin explained. “And much of it is just every day — we all have ideas and when they’re good, when we like them, we kind of save them or memorize them. But then the really difficult process is when you actually get together and make decisions about how it’s going to end up. And that becomes a little more mathematical, a little more like in the classroom — there’s a blackboard and there’s numbers and you have to make decisions. So that’s the stage we haven’t completely pulled off yet, but we’re committed to do that when we get back. Before the summer, we’re gonna spend those few months really organizing our ideas. We already know what we like. We’ve all shared our individual ideas with each other, and we have a really good pile of stuff. You have to make those decisions, and you have to kind of wrestle with each other a bit to get to that next stage. And then you have to record it, which is a whole another thing as well. You go into the studio, and you have to — it’s like a pregnancy almost. When you go to the studio, you have to make this final decision of how it’s gonna sound and how you’re gonna play it, and it’s gonna live like that forever. So it’s a real delicate thing to be able to pull off. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable that we take a long time at all. I think that’s only natural, and that’s why I’m proud of it, because it was worked on really hard.”

Asked if it is fair to say that there will be new TOOL music in the next two years, Justin said: “Yeah, well, the other thing is the climate of releasing music has completely changed, especially when you take a long time to make new music. It’s always a bit different when it comes out. So, we’ve talked about releasing a single, just one song— we could do that. We could also release an EP. And I think because we have such a dedicated fan base, everyone’s gonna be up for it. They’ll all be interested, whatever the way it comes out. So we might not necessarily have to really wrestle out a whole album. We talked about the option of just maybe doing it a little differently and doing a song at a time. Or you could release a single and then another single, another single, and then after a year of releasing singles, you could put them all together on a record and make that an album.

“I’m not really answering your question fully, but it doesn’t really have any rules when you’re making music,” he explained. “We’re just kind of making it up. But I can tell you that we absolutely have to write new music to continue doing what we’re doing. We wouldn’t be happy just to just sit on our laurels and play the same stuff over and over again. We really want to create new music to be able to continue doing what we love. So it’s coming. Trust me.”

Asked if he and his TOOL bandmates feel any kind of pressure to satisfy their fans when it comes to releasing new music, Justin said: “Um, not really. It’s more of a pressure on ourselves to be proud of what we allow to go out into the world. And part of that is really working hard on it and creating something that you’re proud of, not kind of being flippant about it, really taking it seriously as an art form. So the pressure really is on ourselves, I would say. And as far as everyone else, you can’t really please everyone. So, there’s always going to be people that don’t like it, and there’s gonna be people that do like it. There’s songs that I don’t like that Adam (Jones, TOOL guitarist) likes. And then sometimes that changes over time. There’ll be a song that I don’t like playing, but then, all of a sudden or over time, I start to be fond of it and see the beauty in it.

“It’s art,” Justin added. “Each to their own. And if you try to please everybody, it’s not gonna work. So you really just have to be true to yourself.”