Danny Carey says that TOOL has "tons of material" for a possible follow-up to last month's "Fear Inoculum".

Released 13 years after its predecessor, "Fear Inoculum" debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. The effort shifted approximately 270,000 equivalent album units in its first week of release, with 248,000 of those in traditional album sales.

Asked in the new issue of Metal Hammer magazine what the future holds for TOOL, the drummer replied: "It's hard to say. We're going to tour on this probably for two or three years at least, I imagine. It feels like what we've done on every album, and then I guess we'll see where we're sitting after that.

"My hope is we get in and knock out another record. We have tons of material. It's not going to take 12 years, or if it does, I'll probably be so old I probably can't pick up my sticks any more! But my hope is we'll do another record and just keep moving forward."

According to Carey, there is now "more motivation" for TOOL to make new music. "The carrot on the stick has gotten larger because now we'll be free agents — we don't have to deal with a record company or if we do, we deal with it on our terms, because we can do whatever we want now," he explained.

"This is the last record of a five-album deal, so that's a good feeling and I hope that will be motivational in the writing processes."

As for how much material TOOL has after the "Fear Inoculum" sessions, Carey said: "There are no leftover TOOL songs because of the process it takes to compose our songs — the way we hash it out in a room with all three or four of us, that there's tons of riffs and jams and things. But there's no put-together songs that are sitting in the eaves.

"It'll take a process of doing it. And if we do do another album, it'll take three years after touring. That's just the way it is with our band."

"Fear Inoculum"'s first-week numbers made it the biggest debut for any rock album to be released in over a year.

In its second week of release, "Fear Inoculum" fell from No. 1 to No. 7, with 38,000 equivalent album units earned (down 86%).