New Tool Projects: Maynard’s New Puscifer Album, Adam Jones’ New Track
The members of Tool have been busy as of late with a variety of different non-Tool related projects.
Maynard James Keenan has been doing a lot of press in promotion of the new Puscifer album, Existential Reckoning, the band’s first new album since 2015’s Money Shot.
While a title like Existential Reckoning might indicate the album has been in the works since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Keenan told Spin, “Mat [Mitchell] has been working a lot, putting a lot of pieces together, putting them in folders, putting them online for me to access. As soon as I was wrapped up on tracking my parts for the last Tool album, I started looking in the folder. So we started chipping away late ’18, early ’19. And then when you have a little bit of momentum, you can start setting deadlines for yourself. Like, ‘Okay, if we get to this number of tracks at 75%, then we should just do the push and get it done.’ And that was all pretty much at the end of ‘19.”
Existential Reckoning comes out Friday (October 30) and is available for pre-save on digital platforms here. The album’s first singles, “Apocalyptical” and “The Underwhelming,” are embedded below.
Guitarist Adam Jones, meanwhile, has released a new piece of music featuring Tool bandmates Danny Carey and Justin Chancellor in honor of his new custom Gibson Les Paul guitar.
Embedded below is a short film called “The Witness,” which features a score created by Jones. The 7:37 video culminates in the unveiling of Jones’ stunning custom Les Paul.
In a statement on the guitar, Gibson said, “The Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom is a limited-edition guitar offering from Gibson Custom Shop Murphy Lab that exactly recreates Adam’s #1 guitar, his prized original Silverburst 1979 Gibson Les Paul. A limited offering of 79 Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom replicas have been precisely aged by the expert luthiers and craftspeople of the Gibson Custom Shop Murphy Lab, led by Tom Murphy, then signed and numbered by Adam himself. An additional 179 Adam Jones Les Paul Custom replicas for 2020 feature exclusive silkscreen artwork on the back of the headstock, created by Joyce Su and Adam.”
The custom guitars retail for $5,999 and $9,999, respectively. For complete specs on these guitars, head on over to Gibson.com.
