Maynard James Keenan

Bands: Tool, Pusifer, Perfect Circle.

Albums: Fear Innoculum, 10,000 Days, Conditions of My Parole, Existential Reckoning, Eat the Elephant,

Maynard is yet another unrelenting creative, god knows where he gets the energy from but every breath drawn appears to be used towards the creation of something new. From any one of his three bands to his businesses and vineyards. The quality of his output is also extremely high, all the albums listed above sound great and come with all the bells and whistles of premium merch and so forth. A born performer!

Tools last two records are particularly note worthy due to the detailed arrangements and production values. Fear Innoculum in particular has a smooth coalescence that is eloquently whole and complete. If you trace back the bands history it will become quite apparent that this is the finished product; 10,000 days is really strong, though rougher around the edges - as with the albums prior to that. The advantage to these earlier albums however are the esoteric Easter eggs that correlate to fibonnachi ratios, or tracks that can be layered over each other.

Musically the band is a full package; rhythmically, harmonically, melodically interesting with highly refined messaging. Many of the tracks sound extremely organic due to the odd time signatures like 7/8 or 5/4. This tends to move about as well. Favorite Tool tracks include “Jambi”, “The Pot” and “Vicarious” from 10,000 Days and perhaps “Invincible” or “Decending” from Fear Innoculum though it’s a harder album to pick from due to the self similar cohesiveness of the tracks.

Puscifer then are another vibe, much less esoteric and more of a comedy show or drama than anything. It’s quite something. You get all sorts of characters and narratives popping out of this setup; seemingly a parody on life, or maybe the three gunas who then give rise to the wheel of samsara. Musically Pusifer are more versitile and experimental than Tool or APC, which has a charming novelty, though at the cost of consistency which is quite honestly advertised as SPAM. Tracks to dig on would be the title track of “Conditions of My Parole”, which is a really solid album with tracks like “Monsoons” “The Weaver”, “Green Valley” and then other tunes like “Bread and Circus” and “Bullet Train to Iowa” from the album Existential Reckoning (#IamTheBriefcase).

A Perfect Circle are then much closer to Tool than Pusifer. There are a few albums to choose from and they’re all worth a listen, though I’d recommend “Eat the Elephant” as the most mature. In particular the title track stands out as delicate and spacious, while “Disillusioned” has the production, arrangement, lyrics and performance.