Album Review: Puscifer – Normal Isn’t
Feb 6/Puscifer Entertainment / Alchemy Recordings / BMG
More than two decades into its existence, and closer to a quarter-century if you trace its earliest incarnations, Puscifer has quietly become Maynard James Keenan’s most prolific and responsive creative outlet. Where Tool moves with tectonic patience and A Perfect Circle operates in focused, intermittent bursts, Puscifer has remained in near-constant motion.
Albums, EPs, remixes, live records, visual narratives, alternative comedy, alter egos. It is a multimedia project that reacts in real time, absorbing the cultural noise and distilling it into an acidic, acerbic experience.
That immediacy is palpable on Normal Isn’t, Puscifer’s fifth full-length album, and their most confrontational statement to date. It is an observation report from a band watching the present destabilizing moment sober and clear-eyed.
Puscifer have never shied away from being political, but this is their most pointed effort to date. And while Normal Isn’t never mentions his name, Donald Trump looms over this album as a catalyst (and muse) whose gravitational pull has warped discourse and empowered cruelty.
Sonically, Puscifer leans hard into goth, post-punk, and new wave, resulting in spiky, inky, textures that hypnotize and unnerve. Analog synths enrichen the soundscape, while Mat Mitchell’s guitars take on a more aggressive, upfront role than in previous Puscifer incarnations. The result is icy, angular and scalpel-sharp, music that pulses with paranoia and dark humor in equal measure.
“Thrust” opens the album with a stuttering beat and heartbeat bass courtesy of Greg Edwards (Failure), immediately setting a confrontational tone. Asymmetrical guitar figures slice through the mix while Maynard delivers one of the album’s most cutting and relatable lines: “Trying not to murder is a daily fucking battle.” It is gallows humor as survival tactic, and co-vocalist Carina Round’s ethereal wail floats above the fray in a ghostly haze.
The title track functions as the album’s thesis. Stop-start riffs and wailing synths eventually lock into a funky, shuffling groove powered by dual bass from Edwards and Tony Levin. Lyrically, it captures the collective loss of footing that has made finding equilibrium impossible in our present moment. But rather than embracing defeatism, Keenan and co. opt for weary resolve.
“Self-Evident” is the album’s bluntest and most cathartic moment. Built on Sarah Jones and Gunnar Olsen’s dual tribal drumming and Mitchell’s guttural guitar riff, punctuated by Keenan crooning “We’ve concluded what is obvious, you’re a bunghole.” The insults are both juvenile and astute, territory that Keenan has always straddled adroitly.
“A Public Stoning” continues this attack, opening with ominous staccato bass and tunneling synths before exploding into stabbing guitars and a disco stomp outro. Puscifer understands that mockery can destabilize power just as effectively as rage, and the song dances on that knife edge.
Not every track is outwardly aggressive. “The Quiet Parts” shifts into darkwave melodrama, its Depeche Mode overtones softened by flashes of Kate Bush-esque theatricality, while “Bad Wolf,” pairs ambling synth bass and oceanic textures with an admission that seems sadly probable: “I now believe that we live in a simulation.” Whether taken literally or metaphorically, it speaks to our current AI era.
The album’s back half widens its lens. “Pendulum” swings between hubris and consequence, with Round’s sampled vocals sounding disembodied and prophetic as pulsating synth lines carry Keenan’s measured delivery. A political shift is coming, the song suggests, but it may arrive as reckoning. “ImpetoUs” offers a rare moment of defiant optimism. A call to remain curious, unpredictable, and defiant.
“Seven One,” featuring Tool bandmate Danny Carey on drums, fuses spoken-word mysticism into liquid sonics and vocodered incantations, functioning as an interstitial ritual before the album’s final thesis.
“The Algorithm,” recorded live, bluntly states what is fueling our societal decay, with Keenan and Round intoning “Doom Scroll Junkies. We’re Ravenous…Attention Addiction…Dopamine Addiction” while an insistent riff grinds with hypnotic insistence.
What ultimately makes Normal Isn’t resonate is its cohesion. This is not a collection of topical songs. It is a unified response against a cultural moment shaped by demagogues, social media, and the erosion of shared reality. In an era nearly devoid of new protest anthems, it provides catharsis, and a reminder that refusing to accept madness as the status quo might be the key to reclaiming our collective sanity.
