Concert Review: Puscifer at Bass Concert Hall, Austin: Maynard James Keenan’s art-music collective channels and parodies modern angst in explosive performance. 

Puscifer are a hard act to quantify, their mix of electronic tinged rock/comedy troupe/performance art is unconfined, elastic and multi-dimensional. And while their discography is formidable, the project formed by Tool / A Perfect Circle frontman Maynard James Keenan needs to be seen live to truly get the full immersive experience.

And the group’s ecstatic Austin fanbase were able to see this vision executed this week, with the band bringing their sardonic spectacle to Bass Concert Hall. And after a searing, stomping, relentless set from noise rap act Moodie Black, fans were primed for the main event.

The band’s delayed tour is in support of their 2020 album Existential Reckoning, a snarky diatribe against the Trump/pandemic era which still seems timely given the long-lasting psychic  (and in some cases physical) scars that feel like a never ending PTSD rabbit-hole.

Before the band took the stage, Keenan appeared in a video as paranoid CIA agent Dick Merkin, playfully threatening to grind audience members into SPAM if they had their phones out during the show.

Kicking things off with Existential opening track Bread and Circus, the group appeared in dark suits, Keenan maintaining his Merkin persona, joined by co-vocalist Carina Round, multi-instrumentalist Mat Mitchell, bassist Josh Moreau and drummer Gunnar Olsen. The song’s pulsing, hypnotic vibe washed over the rabid crowd, setting the stage for what was to follow.

Tracks off their most recent album made up the bulk of the set, including the aural-doom scrolling blip-blooping Apocalyptical, anti-conspiracy theory lament Grey Area 5.1 (which featured actors in alien suits sauntering across the stage), and the sinewy funk of The Underwhelming, with the crowd swaying and bobbing to the hypnotic, snaky bass-line and Keenan’s anti-Trump diatribe.

Keenan and Round were intensely physical throughout the set, running and leaping, appearing on high rise platforms and more, engaging the audience in their absurd theatricality. At one point Keenan looked spent, hunched over and catching his breath, but gestured to Round to continue her sprint with a smile on his face.

One of the major highlights was Fake Affront, with Keenan and Round mocking internet outrage: Far right, far left, same shit/You can drop the fakе affront, pompous ass/Heard it all before, followed by Round’s repeated, soothing refrain of shut the fuck up, making her sound like a profane angel.

Elsewhere the band pulled from older material, including a reworking of Vagina Mine off the group’s 2007 debut V Is For Vagina, ethereal The Humbling River from 2010’s Sound Into Blood Into Wine, and surprise inclusion Flippant, an industrial banger which was an iTunes exclusive off 2015’s Money Shot.

But the most metal moment of the set came with Money Shot’s The Remedy, with Keenan spitting the verse You speak like someone who has never been / Smacked in the fucking mouth over propulsive skronk guitar and militant drums.

After a brief intermission, Keenan appeared to thunderous applause as Billy Dee, the mullet-wigged character he originated on the 90s cult comedy series Mr. Show. He demanded a drink, got no response, and poured his own before plowing into four more numbers, including the title track from 2011’s Conditions of My Parole.

The group ended their set with Bedlamite, a meditation on weathering tragedy: Raise a glass to our, our heterogeneity / Our remarkable resilience through calamity. Its calming refrain it’s going to be alright provided a rare bit of comfort from a notorious cynic. Or maybe Keenan and co. were just taking the piss. It felt reassuring nonetheless.

Before the house lights lit up, he appeared again onscreen as Merkin, who was struggling to play the game Bop It. It was an odd, awkward end to a show full of left turns. In other words, it was perfectly Puscifer in the best way.