LOS ANGELES, CA- Puscifer’s never been easy to define. What started as Maynard James Keenan’s surrealist playground for sonic experimentation and character-driven satire has become a self-contained universe. It’s a musical realm that’s as much performance art as it is music. Across its existence, Puscifer has swung from electronic absurdism to existential rock to pandemic-era alien transmissions, but this new Normal Isn’t era feels like a confident merging of every creative impulse that came before. It’s darker, heavier, more electronic… with, thankfully, one hell of a funny bone..
I’ve been lucky enough to witness the Pusciverse unfold in real time: from the country-soaked antics of Billy D and his wife Hildy Bergero the government-parody swagger of Special Agent Dick Merkin… and now, there’s a new figure taking center stage. The video for “Pendulum” introduces Bellendia Black, a pale, spectral presence wrapped in an air of “forlorn”. Puscifer has always balanced between parody and pathos, and Bellendia seems to straddle both with ease.
Musically, “Pendulum” leans hard into post-punk territory. Fairlight synths, cavernous reverb, and a cold, swinging rhythm call back to the darkwave underbelly of the 1980s. Keenan described it best himself: “The dramatic and romantic nature of this track induces a sonic sense memory that transports me back to the dark and moody dance floor of Club Iguana, Austin, TX, circa 1985.” And that’s exactly how it feels: brooding, stylish, hypnotic. The chorus commands, “Swing, swing, oh pendulum / Bring the balance and our terminus,” like a gothic sermon echoing through a foggy club.
That same push and pull (between satire and sincerity, between dread and humor) also defines “Self Evident,” the album’s first single. On first listen, I worried that this new era might lose some of Puscifer’s signature mischief. Then the song opened with “You’re an idiot / You embody every bit of it / Even set a new precedent”, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Only Maynard could pair a crushing industrial groove with insults like “You’re a bunghole… bloody drongo” (I had too look it up, but, “bloody drongo” means “bloody idiot”) and make it sound like a righteous exorcism of modern stupidity.
Both singles point to Normal Isn’t as a kind of mirror held up to our collective absurdity. It seems like a place where rage and ridicule coexist. The lyrics are sharp, the production heavier, but that sardonic wink remains. Carina Round’s harmonies wrap around the chaos like velvet binding wire, while Mat Mitchell’s guitars slash through synth clouds with a raw, unfiltered edge.
For a band that’s always been an ever-mutating creative organism, this feels like evolution rather than reinvention. The humor’s intact, the experimentation’s alive, and the sonic palette has expanded to include the full weight of Keenan’s goth-punk roots. It’s as if Puscifer is circling back to the underground energy that first birthed the project… only now, they’re armed with the experience and precision to wield it like a weapon.
After nearly two decades of shapeshifting, Normal Isn’t seems poised to deliver Puscifer’s most cohesive vision yet: a collision of shadow and smirk, decay and disco ball. With Bellendia Black at the helm of this next act, it’s clear that the pendulum is swinging… and I, for one, am ready to dance/mosh/head bang wherever it lands.
Normal Isn’t arrives February 6 via Puscifer Entertainment, Alchemy Recordings, and BMG, promising eleven tracks that dive deeper into this sleek, shadowy world they’ve built. The band will take the new material on the road this spring, with a North American tour kicking off March 20 in Las Vegas and wrapping up May 14 at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. If the new singles are any indication, these shows won’t just be concerts, they’ll be darkly comic rituals where absurdity and artistry collide under flickering neon light.
Follow Puscifer on Facebook, TikTok, X, and Instagram.
*********************
