Puscifer, the multi-dimensional band featuring Maynard James Keenan, Mat Mitchell and Carina Round, brings their highly-anticipated Normal Isn’t Tour to Akron Civic Theatre on April 16.
The tour celebrates the band’s first new album in over five years, Normal Isn’t. The record channels the post-punk influences that shaped the members’ early musical experiences while pushing into darker, more guitar-driven territory. “We’re definitely leaning into our early influences,” Keenan shares. “It’s the place where goth meets punk. It’s where I came from.”
Written and recorded across Arizona, Los Angeles, and on the road during last year’s Sessanta tour, Normal Isn’t blends the dark electronics and sharp humor Puscifer is known for with a more spontaneous creative process. “From the outset, we had discussed an element of rawness and edge, which guitar brings,” shares Mitchell, who co-produced the album. “We got rid of the guard rails and made the music more aggressive.”
For Keenan, this release represents a new approach to songwriting. While he’s always been deeply involved in shaping Puscifer’s sound, this time he set-up his own digital recording system and built full song ideas before presenting them to Mat and Carina.
That shift gives the music fresh immediacy, one that Round says changed the dynamic in the studio. “Instead of just saying, ‘I want this to sound like Fleetwood Mac on cocaine if they had a baby with PJ Harvey,’ Maynard was showing us his intention, which was really cool,” she explains. “In Puscifer, any idea can totally change without any preciousness, and everybody is on board – not unlike an insane asylum. We found each other because we’re demented in a symbiotic way.”
“Normal Isn’t reflects this time we are living in,” Keenan adds. “As storytellers and artists, our job is to observe, interpret, and report. We take in our environment and share what we see, and what we see around us does not appear normal. Not by a long shot.”
Get tickets and more info at Ticketmaster.com