Tool have unveiled the cover art for their long-awaited new album, Fear Inoculum.

You can see a static image of the artwork above, and an animated version, which appears to show a pulsating, coiled snake possibly made up of hundreds of tiny eyeballs, below.

The band also announced that the first song from the album will be posted on Wednesday and that pre-orders for Fear Inoculum will start at that time.

In a new interview with Guitar World (via The PRP), guitarist Adam Jones revealed that the highly anticipated album will feature seven tracks and an 80-minute running time, and that the number seven turned up many times during the recording of Fear Inoculum.

"I took a picture pointing to the number seven while we were recording, and a lot of the riffs [bassist] Justin [Chancellor] and I brought in were in seven," he explained. "You don’t really go ‘I’m going to write a riff in seven!'; you just write a riff and you count it out and it turns out to be in seven. Without being too descriptive about the concept, the main thing is that the seven beat just kept coming up, and riffs in seven kept coming up. It was really weird!"

The coincidences piled up so much that at one point Jones even suggested a numeric title for the album.

"When we finished recording, I went to the guys and said, ‘I think we should called the record Volume 7’ because a lot of the songs are in seven and there are seven tracks on the record. Then Maynard told me about a whole concept he had about the number seven. We were all like, ‘Oh my God! This is too weird!’" he said. "Then [Tool album artist] Alex Grey basically said the same thing, and he has a concept that will reveal itself through video."

Fear Inoculum will be released on Aug. 30. It marks Tool's first album since 2006's 10,000 Days.

 

 

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