Tool United States

"This album is very much a hit or miss for me. Aside from the Wings for Mary suite, which I actually think is one of the band's best works they've put out, the Rosetta Stoned suite, and Intention, I find this album extremely dull and boring, without enough diversity - many of the tracks feel regurgitated - top it off with some classic mid-2000s poor engineering and compression, and I'm quite unimpressed with this one. Although from a composition point of view, I would actually put this one as their best but I don't think they managed to play these compositions well at all and again, I stress the poor production which I think really contributed to my dislike for this album - I also find it's probably Tool's only "proper" prog/progressive album in my opinion, yet I'm very turned off by the band's pretentious attitude at this point of their career and that the digipak CD with the stereoscopic glasses took up too much space on my CD shelf; I guess I have gone against the grain on this one with my rating. Whoops."

"I admit... I'm not a Tool fan. However, I figured I would give this album a shot and some of the songs did impress me. Vicarious, Jambi, 10,000 Days, The Pot and Right in Two are pretty good songs. Some of the songs are just plain boring and aren't worth listening to: Wings for Marie and Intension. They make me like this album a lot less. The rest of the tracks (Lipan Conjuring, Lost Keys and Viginti Tres) aren't really spectacular but serve their purpose and also aren't significant enough to really affect the rating I'm ending up giving the album. So all in all, a decent effort but nothing spectacular. If you're a fan of lyrics though, check this album out. I'm going to give their other albums a shot as well, perhaps I'll like them..."

"I love it! To me it seems like a good successor of Lateralus - some tracks are as ambitioned and abstract, others are less tense and and even a bit mellow, reminding of Aenima. I really like the epic of the album - tracks #3 and #4. They're really gloomy and sort of depressing - Maynard never explains the lyrics, but I'm sure they are mostly about his mother, but might also include other topics.

I think that I'll prefer this to Lateralus in the long run - somehow 10,000 Days feels more balanced to me, but it's really too early for a final verdict."

"This is a real masterpiece of prog metal ... a genre defining album. I won't go into too much detail in this review, maybe I'll expand it later on. The foremost quality of this album is its unbelievably focused and determined approach - Tool are a quite popular band, but they make absolutely no compromises here. Every little bit is carefully arranged, and the subtle mathematic implications of the rhythmic changes are stunning and never seem uncalled for or out of place. The result is a complex work of art, which is up there with albums like Larks Tongues or A Pleasant Shade of Gray.

This is an absolutely essential album in every prog collection ... even if you don't like prog metal, you should at least have heard this album."