Tool are one of the biggest cult bands on the planet, a band of ambitious prog-metal warriors capable of bringing millions with them even on their furthest-out excursions. But it’s been eight years since 10,000 Days, the band’s last album, and they don’t seem to be a whole lot closer to getting a new one done. And now guitarist Adam Jones laments the fact that the band’s fans are all “pissed” at them and says that a weird web of lawsuits is making it harder for the band to record.

Talking to Rolling Stone, Jones claims that the real problem is that an insurance company, one the band hired to help them with a different lawsuit, sued the band over technicalities, and the band countersued. That court case has been going on for years, and it’s drained the band’s energy and financial resources. It’s not that Tool have been legally barred from recording or anything; it’s that all this litigation is making it harder for them to concentrate.

Talking about the legal fight, drummer Danny Carey says, “The whole thing is really depressing. The bad thing is it’s really time consuming. As we’ve gotten older and our priorities have changed, it’s hard to get the band on a good, solid schedule as it is. People have kids now. And there’s lots of other things that pop up. To throw this into the mix, it makes everything that much worse and stresses people out.”

Jones agrees: “It’s costing millions and millions and millions of dollars to defend us. And the fans are all going, ‘We want a new Tool album. What the fuck?’ And you don’t want to pull people into your problems, because they don’t understand.”

But Jones and Carey do say that the band has been working on new music, and that they’ve got plenty of ideas germinating. There’s also one monster of a 10-minute song that’s almost done, which Carey says is “a little more ‘metal’ sounding, if I may.” The prospect of a metal-sounding Tool album is, at the very least, an intriguing one. But if they haven’t even completed one song after eight years, it’s probably best not to hold our collective breath on this one. In any case, there are more details on their progress at Rolling Stone.