Heavy metal rockers Tool are promising a "solid" and "slightly twisted" show when they headline the Big Day Out next year - but they won't be showcasing any new songs.



Tool - known for their creepy videos, complex song arrangements and brutally heavy anthems like Stinkfist - will close the main stage when they perform at next year's Big Day Out music festival at Mt Smart Stadium in Auckland.



They last headlined the event in 2007 and it's been four years since they released an album, but bassist Justin Chancellor said the Los Angeles-based band had decided not to play any new material on this tour.



"It's a rule of ours not to do that. A lot of ideas for albums sometimes come from jams that we've included in songs live, so there might be a little peppering of ideas you'll hear in songs later ... but to play a (new) song now would be unfaithful to the song."



He admitted the set would be different to that performed in 2007, which included a trippy laser show, a human electric orb ball display and former System of a Down front man Serj Tankian - who guested on their 1993 hit Sober.



"We've talked about the Big Day Out. There's going to be a lot of fantastic new music there. We're really honoured to have been asked to do it and pretty much our role is going to be to close it with a really solid Tool set.

"We did a tour in the States this summer and a couple of old songs we bought back, reworked a couple of (others). We've got some movements in each song, little jams we've come up with.



"It will be greatest hits, but slightly twisted."



Chancellor, who provides the band's rib-rattling bass riffs, is joined in Tool by drummer Danny Carey, guitarist and visual director Adam Jones and moody singer Maynard James Keenan.



Their most well known album is 1996's Aenima, and recent shows have opened with Third Eye and also featured standout songs Forty-Six & 2, Aenema, and Stinkfist from that album, along with more recent singles Vicarious and Lateralus.

Chancellor said fans would have to hold their breath until the end of next year for the follow-up to 2006's 10,000 Days, but promised: "The wait will be worth it".



"We've all talked about it and we realised if we are going to pull off something that's going to be worthy and remarkable it's going to take a little bit longer this time," he said.



"I think our band works that way. We're not complete prodigies musically and as a band together it takes more and more work to find something new and special. It's going to take a little time and a little patience but we're absolutely determined to come up with something exceptional."



He admitted the band's four members had butted heads in the studio in the past, but said they were working more like a team this time around.



"Everyone is working together a little better. The complexity of some of the music isn't getting in the way of the flow of the song, so we've got some pretty crazy stuff going on but it feels very much smoother. There's some really heavy stuff but some really beautiful stuff too.

TWIST AND SHOUT: Bassist Justin Chancellor, top left, says Tool will be playing a 'slightly twisted' greatest hits set at 2011 Big Day Out.

"For me it feels a lot more effortless this time, even though there's a lot of effort going into it."

Despite the possible delays the Big Day Out tour might cause to the album, Chancellor said Tool said 'yes' to taking the headlining slot pretty much instantly.

"We were into it immediately ... New Zealand is right up there, there really seems to be full acceptance for what we're doing."

Big Day Out

January 21: Mt Smart Stadium, Auckland

* Will you be going? Post your comments below.