Artist:Puscifer
Album:Donkey Punch the Night
Release Date:Feb. 19
Label: Puscifer Entertainment
Grade: B
When Maynard James Keenan isn't enraging Tool fans by not announcing a new album, he spends his time with his weird, bass-heavy, experimental, comedic, electronic side project known as Puscifer.
Fans of A Perfect Circle and Tool may be familiar with the project; Puscifer spent a good portion of 2012 touring North America, dropping in at festivals such as Bonnaroo and River's Edge.
Last Tuesday, Puscifer released its new EP, Donkey Punch the Night, keeping with the tradition of strange and offensive album titles like 2007's 'V' is for Vagina and 2009's'C' is for (Please Insert Sophomoric Genitalia Reference Here).
Those more inundated in Puscifer's work will most likely have mixed reactions to the new EP.
Puscifer's last album release, Conditions of My Parole, saw limited success with singles such as "Man Overboard," a track that came with a downright bizarre CGI music video of Keenan and the band on a steam-punk cosmic space boat rocking out on the top deck above what looked like the Sahara Desert on Planet X. The album itself was enjoyable with Keenan's bass-heavy, low frequency experimental jive.
Puscifer keeps the 'weird' up with Donkey Punch the Night.
This will be a hard album for fans of Keenan's work to swallow. With only two original songs, two covers and four different remixes, its only failure is in the lack of original content.
The EP starts off with a cover of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" titled " Bohemian Rhapsody (O.G. mix)," and while the cover is significantly more enjoyable than your rocker friend's garage band Queen covers, Keenan and the gang are no Freddie Mercury and Brian May.
The two original tracks, "Breathe" and "Dear Brother" will have Tool and A Perfect Circle fans pleasantly surprised. Puscifer really went bass heavy on this EP and Keenan incorporates a significant electronic element into his music with a very cool high end on the guitar and synthesizer.
For those musicians out there looking for a new sound on their low-tones, these songs will deliver with their compressed and fuzzy, but not too shallow and processed, tones. The original songs have a very open, ambient, late-industrial sound that somehow works out in the context of the "Bohemian Rhapsody" cover.
On "Balls to the Wall (Pillow Fight mix)," Puscifer went with a whispering, spoken-word lyrical effect, and the result is mesmerizing. Juliette Commagere provides backing vocals, and her higher voice mixes beautifully with Keenan's own creepy undertone.
The other tracks on the album are remixes of the two new songs "Breathe (Drumcell rework)" and "Dear Brother (Denton rework)." There's a "Balls to the Wall (Silent Servant El Guapo mix)" redux as well, which is very ambient and interesting, to say the least.
Like most of Puscifer's works, listening to this album once through can feel deeply confusing, but once again, the only failure is the lack of original content.
Perhaps this is a teaser for a new full-length to come, and if that's the case, fans are dying to hear what Keenan and the gang have in store.
But ultimately, what they really want is a new Tool album, and Keenan probably knows it.
Email: arts@ubspectrum.com
