On November 22nd, 2022, The Existential Reckoning tour made its final stop at the Yavapai College Performing Arts Theater. This was the last stop of a two-legged tour that ran back and forth across the U.S. Pusciforce of the TMZ-anon division, headed by Agent Dick Merkin, is a team of super-secret elite investigators had been traveling across the nation looking into a series of electromagnetic bursts that had been occurring since early this year. The team of investigators has made their way from east to west and back again twice. It is still unclear whether the cause of these electromagnetic bursts was ever discovered…I suppose we still need to await the summary report from the TMZ-Anon division.
When I got to the Yavapai College Performing Arts Center, the first act had just gotten started, and they had that entire room moving. Night Club is an electric synth-pop/dark wave duo made up of Emily Kavanaugh and Mark Brooks. While Mark spends his time behind the table spinning their phenomenal beats and dark melodies, Emily takes that stage and absolutely owns it. Dressed in an all-black schoolgirl outfit, she danced around that stage, back and forth working the crowd like an absolute queen. Her performance was sexy, provocative, and hauntingly seductive. While their music isn’t very upbeat, they had the entire room rockin’ hard! I would venture to say that Night Club left that venue with more than a few new fans. There really didn’t seem to be a single person in the crows that wasn’t enjoying their show. They played their most popular songs including “Candy Coated Suicide”, “Your Addiction”, and “California Killed Me”. I was surprised at how well this duo could pull a crowd in and keep them enthralled the way they did. I felt like I was at a hard rock show, I can’t wait to see Night Club headlining massive shows of their own someday soon.
The intermission was extremely short and Puscifer was on the stage before knew what was going on. Before we get into it, I’d like to take a little detour… If you haven’t seen Puscifer live, I highly implore you to do so. First off, one of the biggest differences between a Puscifer concert and any other concert these days is that there are absolutely no phones or cameras allowed (unless you’re approved media of course). Personally, I love this. I believe that if you’re spending all this money to see a band perform live you should be present. Why people spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to attend a concert and then spend the entire time watching the show through the screen of their phones is beyond me. Maynard spoke as to why he doesn’t allow phones or cameras at his shows back in 2017 on an episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “This stuff annoys me – because I’m a firm believer in oral tradition. I embrace the storytelling – being able to describe to your friends that, sitting around that fire after a good long day of hunting. Where you tell the story about hunt and you do all those things, and those family stories, and your grandfather, and your great-grandfather’s stories are told in that setting. And you’re not writing it down. It’s a tradition of understanding the details and being able to explain and expand on the details from your recollection of what you saw. But if you have no skills in absorbing what you saw, if you rely on this thing [holds up a phone] to capture their stories for you… First of all, nothing you’re gonna get at a show is gonna represent what you just saw, or what you were there for. As a postcard I suppose it works. But stay present! Stay with these people to be there for this thing. That’s far more important. Also, as courtesy, maybe the person behind you would like to be that person who’s enjoying this and now your shit’s in their way.”
I realize that many fans are crossovers from Maynard James Keenans other projects like TOOL and A Perfect Circle, but this is something FAR different. In other projects, Maynard tends to stay hidden in the background and there are so many theories as to why this might be the case, from light sensitivity to feedback interference, from the unwanted attention to giving the guitarists enough room to perform and being able to focus on just his vocals. Through all the theories, one thing is clear; Maynard hates the spotlight. Unless of course, he is performing with Puscifer. This is the only act that you will actually see Maynard performing front and center, but that is mostly due to the unique nature of Puscifer. This isn’t just a music group, this is a show, an act, a true performance. Most concerts simply involve a band performing, as themselves. Puscifer consists of a story and a quite elaborate one at that. This is a saga involving Billy D, Hilde, Agent Merkin, Agent Round, a briefcase and so many more.
When the lights went down in the theater, we were off! The show began with a video being played on two large projector screens. The video showed Agent Merkin talking about SPAM. No, not junk mail that floods our email accounts. We are talking about that tantalizingly delicious, yet hauntingly mysterious loaf of canned meat in a dark blue tin with big yellow letters. SPAM. Agent Merkin went on to talk about the deliciousness of spam, yet he stated that while the ingredients were unknown for the most part, there was one special ingredient that they found imperative to the making of this culinary treat: ground-up human. That being said, any person caught filming or taking photos of the show would be removed from the audience by force and used to make more of the delicious Spam.
For their first song “Bread and Circus”, both agent Merkin and Agent Round stayed towards the back of the stage, slowly swaying side to side in harmony as they sang. After that, the act kicked into high gear. Both agent Merkin and agent Round danced, ran around the stage, they fumbled with contraptions that attached their microphones to their bodies, and as always, the beautiful agent Round kept the dim-witted agent Merkin on track by continuously reminding him where they were performing and what they were doing. As well as being a phenomenal group of talented artists performing amazing music, one must always keep in mind that this is also a comedy show. In Maynard’s biography, “A Perfect Union of Contrary Things”, he expressed his desire to blend comedy and music together but never really having or saw the opportunity until he decided to finally create an assemble dedicated to such an endeavor. I can tell you now that this band is both musically and comedically entertaining.
During Puscifer’s performance both Billy D. and Hilde made appearances, a person filming the show was seized by secret agents and carried offstage, and in the end, some aliens came to join the fun. All in all, it was a wildly entertaining performance packed with unique soundscapes, over-the-top production with mind-bending light patterns, and cosmic/psychedelic visuals, all sprinkled with a heavy dose of pure hilarity. While this may have been the last stop on the Existential Reckoning Tour, this won’t be the last you’ll be hearing from Puscifer. They just released an album containing some new mixes of older songs called “V is for Versatile” which I personally love. Keep your eyes open and on the lookout for future tours and show dates. This is one band that you don’t want to miss!
