Puscifer @ The Louisville Palace- Louisville
LA rock group Puscifer brought their Existential Reckoning Tour to Louisville, KY on 11/11 and drew a packed venue of fans! Led by singer Maynard James Keenan, who also fronts Tool and A Perfect Circle, he has a wide variety of fans who love all three of his bands and were ready to rock out this evening! Having recently released their 4th studio album Exisatential Reckoning, the band performed the album in its entirety this evening. Opening the show was the LA darkwave electronica band Night Club. Consisting of Mark Brooks on keys/synth and Emily Kavanaugh on vocals, they definitely got the crowd warmed up. With dark, moody lighting of blues, reds, and bursts of white, Kavanaugh paced the stage and engaged the crowd, her powerful voice cutting through the electronic beats! With plenty of singles, Eps, and albums in their catalog, their most recent being 2020’s Die Die Lullaby, they sang a nice selection of songs and were a great start to the evening.
Next up was Puscifer. Starting out their set, before the band came out onto the stage, was Keenan’s alter-ego agent Dick Merkin on the screen at the back of the stage humorously relaying the band’s no phone policy, saying anyone who violated the policy would be ground up by two meat processors into a fine paste and added as an ingredient in SPAM. The stage production for their set was amazing, with the band presenting the audience with a multimedia experience that had the band investigating alien abductions by men-in-black agents! The first song, “Bread and Circus”, saw the stage dimly lit with only a couple of the members present, drummer Gunnar Olsen, bassist Josh Moreau, and multi-instrumentalist Mat Mitchell on keys, easing everyone into the evening. A few minutes into the song, we saw Maynard’s agent Dick Merkin, along with Carina Round (vocals), enter the stage. The second song “Postulous” saw a slew of special agents come out to take away a Billy D imposter, who breached the camera policy, after being pointed out by Agent Merkin.
Although their set was heavy on songs from Existential Reckoning, they delighted their fans with songs from their other albums, as well. About halfway through their set, the video screen showed a second message from Agent Merkin, telling the crowd that Pusciforce had identified an alien-owned and operated hidden mobile cloning facility whose purpose seemed to be to duplicate or replace red-carpet celebrities whom they felt were mediocre or had bad fashion tastes. Later, after a brief intermission, Keenan came out atop the scaffolding at the center of the stage as his Billy D persona as costumed aliens joined the band on stage, with plenty of hilarious alien antics ensuing. With an 18-song set, ending the set with “Bedlamite”, the band gave the crowd an incredible evening of music and visual delights. The thought and production that went into this evening’s performance were impressive and engaged the crowd from start to finish!
PUSCIFER
NIGHT CLUB
