Puscifer
Conditions Of My Parole

His wine wasn't enough to make Maynard James Keenan a cheerful person. Nor to inspire him.

The proof is Puscifer. Mr. Tool's "industrial" creature takes shape, in fact, in the cellars where the much-touted wine is stored, but even from its first monstrous cries, it didn't convince me at all, and it continues to do so, with some progress. I expected much worse after the (almost) terrible (almost because I save a couple of tracks) "V Is For Vagina".

As usual, to make the product more appealing, our hero gathers a large circle of nutcases collected here and there, for example? Former Mars Volta Jon Theodore, the Stolen Babies Rani and Gil Sharone, the lost son of Les Claypool Tim Alexander, the sound master from the last live incarnation of NIN Alessandro Cortini, and others. But still, the inspiration isn't as shining as one would imagine. With this plethoric bunch of monsters along with MJK's nightmare voice, it should turn out to be an album to lick your toes over.

But no, or rather, I am conflicted, I admit, not as much as I would expect from this alternative monster (take this damn definition with a grain of salt). If I had been swayed by the horrible '80s sound of "Tiny Monsters" with this fake synth accompanying a mushy vocal line and introducing an electric drum that makes your skin crawl, I would have stopped here, but for me, the wine helped me carry on till the end. By the second track, we're already somewhere else, "Green Valley" takes a magnificent singer-songwriter turn, a filtered voice with Keenan caressing the guitar strings like the good old times of early APC, hand in hand with a female voice and distant choirs, then introducing a fuzz-laden guitar and a rhythm section that really takes us back to "Mer De Noms".

But we're not in the court of the Circle even though "Telling Ghosts" might delude us, a melancholic intro veers into a notable industrial rock explosion reinforced by many nice smacks that turn into pitiful caresses in the verse soon returning to hurt, but never enough, and so too in the Nine Inch Nails-esque "Toma", bastard but too derivative of the Reznor monster, and obviously totally lacking the Maestro's flair. Lustful instead is the country-crap swerve of the title-track (I also recommend the video), filthy and punchy, with an enormous bass dripping with grease like the mouth of a bloody redneck fished out from who knows where.

In "The Weaver" instead he took the flying guitar melodies of certain '80s U2 and soaked them in a black and sour mush, in counterpoint, with a splendid voice. Instead, I can't explain the banjo and the rest of the track that closes the album, nor the obscene electronics of certain others, and the Marilyn Manson-type antics here and there, which even draw from me quite a colorful curse. Did I drink too much wine?

In short, Maynard, with Puscifer...what the hell are you trying to tell us?