@FACTSAREUSELESS I'm thinking that a solid amount of practicing jams went on before this tour kicked off and a fair bit of methodological discussion might have happened about their playing. It's obvious trey is trying to take a step back in the severe type II stuff but I think he found the honey zone where he 'says' just enough. They don't have a trademark style in their jamming to fall back to so the way they approach jamming seems to me to be about inter-band dynamics. Kind of a 'passing the baton' relay-race style thing where everyone says their own 'hey' if they feel inspired.

I admit I was worried that the focus of practicing was going to be solely on new material, but maybe they're taking a more billy breathes style 'blob' approach to see what arises in longer jamming as possible new material. If the tour schedule is supplemented by intense jamming sessions, then these breaks in the schedule aren't really breaks at all. Of course this is all highly speculative, but it certainly sounds to me like they've been practicing jamming for jamming sake. Maybe the first tour of the year is about tightness and the second more about overall sound. Personally, I'll take stunning jams over tightness everyday but they seem to be doing both right now. Which is ideal.