First Time Listening to Puscifer's 'The Remedy'

May 2, 2024

First Time Reaction to Puscifer - "The Remedy"

My History with Puscifer

For those of you who don't know, I'm a big Tool fan, but lately Mayard has been losing me a bit. When Tool's 'Fear Innoculum' album was released I wasn't really a fan of it. It felt more like Lateralus B-sides. The most recent A Perfect Circle album completely lost it for me - there was only two good songs on there at best - the rest was a bit of fireside trash.

But as far as Puscifer is concerned, when they released their very first track back when Revelation 22:20 was included on the Underworld OST (yes, that Matrix looking vampire vs werewolves movie) I was really excited for this dark, alternative, crooning style of Maynard's. It was incredibly moody and engaging but when Puscifer started releasing albums and when "Conditions Of My Parole" came out I was just like "no, no, this isn't what I signed up for."

So I haven't really been staying up to date with Puscifer. I have not listened to the last two albums so this is going to be new for me. I'll be checking out Puscifer's track 'The Remedy' which was performed at Rock am Ring back in 2016. I'm told this is a great performance so let's get stuck into this and see what I think.

First Time Reaction to Puscifer - "The Remedy"

So let's talk about the things I did like. I loved the bass riffs and the drum fills. The bassist; I'm assuming the sound and playing style looked to be Matt McJunkins who has played in A Perfect Circle's live band quite a bit as well as Billy Howerdell's solo band. So I wouldn't be surprised if that was Matt there playing.

I liked the the female vocalist. I can't remember her name but I know she's been part of Puscifer for quite a while now and I liked the dual vocals she and Maynard were providing as they sung their melodies together. But as far as her towards the end? Arming herself with a guitar when there was already two other guitarists didn't really do much for the performance.

I'm not a fan of people playing guitars live just because they can. If it doesn't add anything to the sound then I don't see the point. You see this a lot with country artists where there's three or four people on stage playing a guitar and you've got to ask yourself "what are you doing?" when we're getting nothing out of it as concert goers. We're getting nothing out of this audibly or sonically. Especially if all they're doing is playing the same chords.

Then there's the second half of the song where the performance got more interesting. But due to the lyrical content you've got to ask yourself "is this Maynard's 'shake it off?'" Power to you, Maynard. I know some of you might hate on this comment but I'm just trying to be a little more critical about a Puscifer performance I'm not 100% on board with. Rather than just give verbal hand jobs to this song.

That said, I think if any Puscifer track was going to get me remotely interested in checking out Maynard's bizarre band again then this song would probably do it. So I might go check out some more of Puscifer's discography but if you feel different then leave me a comment below with what you think.