Excerpt from here
Puscifer, “V Is for Vagina” (Self-Released)
Maynard James Keenan, frontman for Tool and A Perfect Circle, has remained a weird sort of enigma: the brooding genius, the perverse satyr, the juvenile prankster. With Puscifer’s debut, that last persona is immediately apparent. Keenan has said Puscifer allows him to give airtime to the other voices in his head, and while somewhat silly, those voices produce some mesmerizing sounds. Officially just Keenan, Puscifer’s rotating lineup includes Tim Alexander (Primus drummer), Danny Lohner (Nine Inch Nails guitarist), Tim Commerford (Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave bassist) and, supposedly, Milla Jovavich (model and zombie-killer).
So it’s Keenan to blame (or praise) for the snickering teenage humor of the album art (an illustrated airline seat insert that looks like it was created in a locker room). But it’s also Keenan to praise (or blame) for the songs, sinister mixes of bass beats, heavy synth chords and the occasional acoustic-guitar strumming. Keenan’s vocals shape the tracks here, though, distorted to a deep monotone hum with his characteristic fluty tenor as backup, rising out of the rumble, as in “Queen B” and “Momma Sed.”
The atonal squawks and fuzz dotting the landscape sound transplanted from a lost Nine Inch Nails track, but it works here, especially with the droning, symphonic “Indigo Children.” In fact, for all its strangeness, everything works here. It’s sort of groovy and sort of heavy and sort of psychedelic, not much like either of his other projects. If A Perfect Circle is Keenan’s feminine side, Puscifer is his stoned 14-year-old boy. — Brandon Reynolds
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