Hey! How’s That New Tool Album Coming? Really? Oh. Sorry I Asked.

As I write this, it has been 3,607 days since the last Tool record. That’s 9 years, 10 months and 15 days. To put that into perspective, the iPhone hadn’t been released at the time of the lat Tool album. Barack Obama was still two years away from becoming president. Avril Lavigne was married to Deryck Whibley. It has been a long, long time and much has changed.

From the looks of it, the wait will continue without end.

According to Maynard James Keenan, work on the group’s fifth album has stalled. Although they’ve been working on the album for several years, they really couldn’t move forward because of a complex court case involving their old label and an insurance company that involved suits and countersuits. But when that was finally cleared up in late 2014, fans has good reason to assume that the band would have something for us soon.

Nope. Not even close.

What’s worse is that there have been promising progress reports. You might remember back in November when Adam Jones described the situation as “amazing.”

Things are really flowing and going really well. I’m just blown away at the stuff that coming together. I can’t wait for it to be done!

Since the, though, radio silence and Maynard has headed out on the road again with his band Puscifer. He said this to PE.com this week:

As for Tool, there have been signs of life recently, including a 17-show tour this past January, but Keenan wasn’t promising any new music from his main band.

“We’ve found a common ground,” he said. “We just can’t seem to move forward.”

Swell. So the question must be asked: When we everyone finally stop caring and move on? Or is that Tool’s plan all along?