Tool’s Adam Jones sat down with Guitar World magazine and talked about the writing process for the new album Fear Inoculum. The guitarist talked about how he dreaded interviews because he had nothing new to say about his approach to writing. The band follows the same process they’ve always had, just now they are a bit older.

“It’s so weird because it’s been so many years and I dread the interviews because I wish I had something new to say after so long, but it was very much the same approach we’ve always had. We’re just older, we have different things influencing us and other distractions in our life that slow us down, but it’s basically the same thing it’s always been.

“The three of us meet, we start throwing riffs around and tearing them apart, we revisit things we wrote a long time ago that may work with the new stuff,” he explained. “It’s really about finding your roots again and remembering why you started in the first place, finding the fire that burned in you when you started, and not letting success distract you. We still really try to be true to our art form.”

He also shared how he is influenced from all different aspects of art and tries to view things in “a more forgiving way.”

“It’s honestly all such a blur. Honestly, it’s all coming in and I try to be like a sponge and vulnerable, and I try to ask a lot of questions and learn. I also try to look at the world — the keyword being ‘try’ — in a more forgiving way.

“When I watch a movie, I pretend I’m 12 because when I was 12 I liked everything,” he continued. “So many people are so jaded about everything and I try to avoid that. I just try to do that with the arts and music in general, and when I hear something, I ask myself what the influences came in when someone was creating it and I acknowledge that a player might not be Eddie Van Halen, but they’re good and they’re good in their own unique way, and I try to pick up on that and try to think from my chest instead of from my head.”

Tool recently announced a North American tour with Killing Joke. Dates can be found here. Want more Tool? Check out what we here at Metal Insider thought of Fear Inoculum here.