Pusicfer: Not as Deep as the Luray Caverns

Album: V is for Vagina
Artist: Puscifer
Genre: Industrial/Trip-Hop
Year: 2007
Label: Sony BMG/Puscifer Entertainment

I’m in a bad mood. I misplaced my iPod device at my place of schooling and so I’ve been without my perpetual sidekick for the past thirty-six hours or so. This meant that I had to go digging around in the stacks of CDs that line my walls to find this fucking disc so I could review it. I’m not sure what inspired me to pull this particular album out and review it, considering that it’s about a year old now. But time has never stopped me before, and this album could use a little critiquing.

Puscifer is the project of Maynard James Keenan, the front man of TooL and A Perfect Circle. Deciding to take some of his unused ideas and make a multi-media circus, Puscifer entertainment is responsible for the making and sale of everything from shirts and hats to women’s… err… “Hygiene” kits. But it’s the music that I’m concerned with. The Puscifer album “V is for Vagina” is far different from Keenan’s usual Metal leanings. Indeed few Metal bands have followings like TooL, but Puscifer is not TooL and probably turned a few (pot) heads when it was released. Far more Industrial and Trip-Hop esqe then TooL, Puscifer is an electronic based project. More than that, the project originated with the idea of centering the music on Keenan’s impressive voice and going from there. TooL already is centered on Keenan’s voice so another group to do that is a little redundant, but then again, Keenan’s voice has never sounded like this before. For those familiar with his singing, Keenan has a beautiful voice. Whether you like metal or not, you can’t deny the power and range there. But with Puscifer, Keenan sounds like his voice is being processed and manipulated, which he claims isn’t the case, but it still sounds deeper and more… no, I’m not going to say, demonic, that would be dumb.

Anyways, another thing about this project is that it’s collaborative, with musicians like Lustmord, Tim Alexander and Jonny Polonsky all contributing their own parts to help Keenan build his ship. So with all this, the new sound, the warped vocals and the contributions from excellent musicians, this project should be a five star success, right? WRONG. The problem is this: the music is interesting, yes, but it lacks the energy that is inherent in Keenan’s other works. Some of the tracks are down right boring where TooL and A Perfect Circle rarely are. Also, one of Keenan’s major talents is his gift for lyricism. Puscifer’s lyrics just aren’t that inspired, and in fact can be fairly tedious. Keenan just doesn’t seem to be taking this project as seriously as he has other ones. Which is a shame considering the potential this album had, being self-released and produced. The potential was all here, but the execution was sorely lacking. This is not to say I hate it, it’s just not as good as it should have been.

Of course, I could be wrong about this entirely. The lack of seeming imagination could all be a colossal joke on you and me; the consumer public. Keenan is a known jokester and this whole album could be an extension of that humor… But wait just a second; a joke that’s intentionally not funny can still not be funny. The humor of this album, if it exists, fails, and therefore so does the irony of it not really being funny. OK, you’re probably scratching your heads now, let me make this concise: It’s a good album, not a great one. It SHOULD have been great but wasn’t. All the ingredients were there, it just fell short of the target put in place by the early singles. Maybe the Remix album will be better.