Puscifer brought the Existential Reckoning Tour on the road to probe as many audiences as possible with aliens, sea creatures, and music.
The night started off by filling the McFarlin Auditorium in University Park, TX, with its not-so-normal attendees. Moodie Black took the stage at 8 pm on the dot. The band played a five-song set and was mostly bathed in solid red light. The band confused the audience because it’s a mix of noise and rap and spoken-word poetry which all mix together well and fit the unique bill for the night.
At 9 pm on the dot, the lights dimmed and the screens on the stage showed a video of Maynard James Keenan aka Dick Merkin saying how spam was the mystery meat and how there is a special ingredient which is humans who pull out their phones during Puscifer performances. The lights then dimmed and the band took the stage. Singer Carina Round and Maynard James Keenan along with everyone else in the band are in full MIB getups to go along with the alien theme of Existential Reckoning which is the name of the album they are touring currently.The band started with the synth-heavy “Bread And Circus.” As the music builds, the lights get brighter and are just a solid blue wash, with the singers off on the right-hand side of the stage with everyone else scattered. The band finished the song and moved around. Maynard and Carina are now front and center. Maynard takes a second to say make sure to listen to the previous statement because if your phones are out, you’ll be removed from the audience. The band then played “Postulous” which featured some interesting dancing from both singers which then brought out more MIB agents to scan the area for extraterrestrials. Close to the end of the set, there was an appearance by a Billy D lookalike with his phone out, which caused everyone in the band to point and chant “spam, spam, spam” while the person was removed. For the rest of this act, the band played “Grey Area,” “Vagina Mine,” “The Underwhelming,” and more.
The band walked off stage and the lights dimmed as the screens turned on again. This time Dick Merkin was back on the video, stating how aliens have infiltrated the world by cloning celebrities and how sometimes it goes wrong and you get artists in music who are so similar to each other. The band makes their way back out with everyone on the stage except Keenan and Round who are up on a scaffolding center stage. The band performs the song “Apocalyptical” which features lots of dancing aliens on stage who stay there for the majority of the second act. During “The Remedy,” the singers have snare drum harnesses with microphones on them that looked like they were floating. This act was shorter as they only played five songs, with fan-favorite “The Humbling River” closing out this part of the performance.
Another Dick Merkin video comes up, this time explaining more of how the aliens are infiltrating the world, even making fun of his real identity and how Wendy O. Williams didn’t die, but actually went through sexual reassignment to not be a clone and is now Maynard James Keenan, and Post Malone was a horrible experiment gone wrong.
For this third and final act, both Keenan and Round have changed clothes and Keenan is his alter ego, Billy D. He wandered around the stage drinking whiskey and looking for refills from the aliens. There is lots of running around, and more aliens than a Sci-Fi horror movie at one point. Billy D has a bullhorn handed to him and goes into “Conditions Of My Parole,” with the whole crowd singing as loud as they can. After the song is done, Billy D states that they have recorded two more Pay-Per-Views that will come out in October so be on the lookout for that, and oh yeah, you can bring your cellphone out for this last song and record it and take photos. The band ended with “Bedlamite” which was fitting with the way the world is today and everything is going to be alright.
After it was all said and done with all of the aliens, MIB, parole violations, and probings, this had to be one of the most interesting and amazing performances that the McFarlin Auditorium has ever hosted.
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