In a new interview with Skinny Puppy founding member cEvin Key, drummer, Danny Carey of Tool discussed his hopes that the band would work on new music during the pandemic and shut down of touring. Carey remarked the band has basically been on hiatus since their spring tour was canceled during the outbreak and the band subsequently cancleed all remaining tours, to give aid to fans needing high priced tickets back, rather than rebook and hold their monies. Danny also mentioned the band doesn’t have a record deal, technically for the first time since early in their career. Tool’s worldwide smash album Fear Inoculum released on August 30th 2019 via Tool Dissectional/RCA Records.

Carey commented (as transcribed by Metainsider.net)

“Tool hasn’t been jamming. We’ve been just kind on hiatus. Nothing’s really been happening. But I think it’s time. We kept hoping that we were gonna get back out, so we were just kind of, ‘Hey, enjoy this while it lasts,’ but now it’s looking like it could go to the rest of the year, so we need to get the lead out and start functioning — maybe knock out another EP, at least, or something like that. We’ve never really done that since our first release — done an EP — so I thought it would be kind of nice to do something like that. We don’t have a record deal anymore — we’re free agents — so we can kind of release whatever we wanna release now, which is a good feeling.”