By DJ Astrocreep
As the temperatures rise, the train across to a favourite haunt is roasting hot and rammed, but nothing is going to deter me from finally seeing Maynard James Keenan live on stage, this time under his Puscifer guise, with support from Californian synth act Night Club. From the off, we are all warned against the use of cameras/phones during the set, so there no photos of Night Club – only of Puscifer from when this rule was relaxed for the last song of the night.
Night Club take to the stage and there’s immediately a feel of British Electric Foundation, both visually and musically, as the duo launch straight into 80s sounds, mixing darkwave with elements of old synth pop and industrial. While it’s a path that’s been tread before, they definitely have some good songs and seem to elicit a decent reaction from the front of the crowd, pretty much from the off. Mixing elements from the likes of Gary Numan (in both his main era sounds), Nine Inch Nails and the likes of B.E.F., it’s a pretty good mix of those elements into a sound that fits well into the evening’s entertainment. While Brooks doesn’t move out from behind his decks, Emily rarely stops on stage, a fairly constant dynamo and they get a decent response from around the room as they finish their 25-minute set.
The only gripes would be a fairly distinct tempo change fairly early in the set felt quite jarring and actually a bit disconcerting, as one song either merged with the next or just had a big shift in time, mixed with a fairly lacklustre stage presence, which let the music side down a bit – some busier visuals may have helped more with this.
So, having not experienced Puscifer live before, I did not expect the live show to include ‘Bop It’, ‘Spam’, the ‘Men In Black’ and ‘White Chicks’ movies, Britney Spears, Madonna and Hulk Hogan – amongst many other things – to be a part of a coherent set, but there we go. Just don’t get me started on Maynard James Keenan’s previous identity….
It’s quite quickly obvious why Maynard and co don’t want videos or images throughout their performance. It is genuinely good to see an almost complete lack of phones and people just paying full attention to the band, as there is so much going on on stage that not doing so would mean missing a lot of stuff. Between choreography, sometimes a little less so (but quite clearly deliberately, when the case), a couple of costume changes and various ‘guest’ appearances from all matter of beings, mixed with backdrop projections and some stellar pre-prepared intermission videos to mask changes behind the scenes, there is just so much to take in that even my mind struggles to keep up, despite a preference for tangents.
In terms of the set, it’s beautifully organized, with the music varying between a blend of post-industrial, synth-pop and synth rock that are absolutely seamlessly melded into a coherent being. I don’t even detect a dropped note at any point, which goes to show quite how top-level they are as a live act, especially considering some of the things they get up to during it. The set itself is fairly simple in its design, but do not let that fool you into thinking there is any lack of preparation or attention to detail, whatsoever!
The main part of the set comprises of 11 songs, including the likes of ‘UPGrade’, ‘Theorem’ and ‘The Remedy’, which I was extremely happy to hear included, personally, while we get a five-song encore, comprising a total two hours of performance. What a performance it is, too – you certainly can’t ask for much more than the kind of visuals and fully sense-assaulting experience I would expect from the likes of Hawkwind in all of their pomp. There is one thing that endures in the memory afterwards, more than anything else…
SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM. SPAM.
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