Danny Carey

“Yeah, I grew up playing lots of jazz music in school.”

“We've always considered our music to be a healing process. It's our 'tool' to work things out with each other and try to communicate with each other and learn things. And it's good for everyone - us and our audience - to get together.”

“Those late '60s early '70s bands would take it really far out and get super-weird.”

“We're not in the business of putting up barriers; that's the job of politicians. They're the idiots who want to build walls between people.”

“All my best drumming, I'm sure, has never been recorded.”

“There are no leftover Tool songs because of the process it takes to compose our songs - the way we hash it out in a room with all three or four of us, that there's tons of riffs and jams and things. But there's no put-together songs that are sitting in the eaves.”

“It seems like on every record we have this big, epic thing like 'Rosetta,' 'Wings For Marie' or 'Lateralus.'”

“Making 13-minute tracks is pretty alternative, I think!”

“It takes us long for a reason, but the end result is: we all completely believe in, not just every verse, every chorus, every bar is scrutinized, and that's the result of what you'll hear on this record.”

“Every record I've ever done with Tool has been on tape.”

“We try to write things that can be interpreted on lots of different levels. There's not a right way or a wrong way... people can adventure a little.”

“We toured for close to three years after 'Undertow' came out, so by the time we started to work on 'AEnima,' we had matured as functional musicians, and that changes your sound completely. Once you have that kind of freedom, an idea will come into your head and you can do it justice.”

“Most of the parts are really gone over and over and over again with Tool. It's a very composed situation. We spend weeks if not months working on all those songs. There's not much room for improvisation.”

“I've been taking tabla lessons and they've helped expand my rhythmic horizons.”

“We have pretty much all the facets of our business under our control now. Relying on someone else to do the right thing, you're just setting yourself up to get screwed. We control our own destiny and it's a really good feeling.”

“We got full artistic integrity and autonomy over what we were doing, and that was the main important thing that kept our band alive.”

“Before 'AEnima,' we were just following our gut. There was a lot of anger in the air and we never tried to control that. But just as we mature as humans, with 'AEnima' we tried to be fueled more by spiritual ideas or more of a conscious mode of aiming things in the right place or trying to take more responsibility for our art.”

“Mike Patton and Dave Lombardo - those guys are a good, heavy influence.”

“Our crowds seem to keep growing whether we put out a record or not, so I feel very lucky to have that support.”

“We're not really in the business to sell ourselves. We want to sell what we work on.”