Following a meteorically successful inaugural year, Sick New World is set to return to the Las Vegas Festival Grounds April 27, 2024 with an enormous collection of the world’s biggest hard rock, alternative, and up and coming artists. With a closing performance from returning headliner System Of A Down, this colossal lineup features over 65 artists across five stages, including Slipknot, Bring Me The Horizon, A Perfect Circle, Alice In Chains, Danny Elfman, Bad Omens, Sleep Token, Knocked Loose, and many more.
Sessanta, an untraditional tour that sees Puscifer, A Perfect Circle, and Primus joining forces, and sharing band members, is slated for April of 2024.The Western U.S. outing is a resurrection, and expansion, of the 2014 Los Angeles event, Cinquanta, which was originally a one-time only celebration. Much like that fabled evening, which commemorated Maynard James Keenan’s landmark 50th birthday, Sessanta celebrates the Puscifer and A Perfect Circle frontman as he turns 60. Sessanta’s unique format sees the musicians from the trio of bands joining each other’s performances throughout the concert. While each group will have their own distinctive set, the players will continually transform as the night unfolds.
“It took some massaging, and some long days in rehearsal, but we managed to seamlessly pull off this three-song rotation at Cinquanta, my 50th birthday shows, at The Greek Theatre in 2014,” says Keenan of the seven-date run that also sees A Perfect Circle’s first live performances since 2018. “Bands aren’t used to simultaneously sharing the stage with other bands, but if anyone can do it, it’s Primus, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer.”
Tickets are on-sale this Friday, Sept. 15, with VIP options available via
Winemaker Maynard James Keenan (Tool, Puscife, a perfect circle) and the team behind Caduceus Cellars and Merkin Vineyards invite people to experience the Verde Valley as never before, with the Oct. 6. Opening of the Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Winery & Trattoria, and Caduceus Cellars Hilltop Facility and VSC Ventura Room.
Vocals and vocalists. They can be the secret weapon that elevates a piece of music into a higher realm, that gives a band a key component to their identity, that once heard you couldn’t imagine them without. They can be a deal breaker too — the ear sore that spoils the whole experience. Sometimes they’re just bland as a wet paper bag. But a voice is a voice. They all say something. They all have a message to convey (even when the message is “sha la la la la”).
Puscifer will always be best known as one of the many creative outlets for Tool / A Perfect Circle vocalist Maynard James Keenan, and as an avenue for the most obscure depths of his musical creativity. But the band has always been a collaborative affair, with Keenan working alongside many different artists over the years, with their albums subsequently always providing an infusion of many different ideas and experiences. Existential Reckoning : Rewired (Puscifer Entertainment / Alchemy Recordings/ BMG)is the remix accompaniment to their 2020 album, which itself was a typically avant-garde electro-rock melting pot of futuristic and otherworldly sounds.
Though hailing from Chicago, Illinois, the doom metal of Rezn displays a touch of East-Asian mysticism about it, on Solace – the band’s self-released fourth full-length. Slow-to-mid-paced, hypnotic riffing goes from nimble and floating to heavy and crushing (and back again) all fluidly and with an altogether gorgeous production that makes this metal album akin to some exotic sweet that still delivers satisfying, crushing heaviness.
For the second time in his career, New York bassist Frank Bello steps into the studio without the help of his Anthrax bandmates to record something a little different. Whereas previous side project Altitudes and Attitude was a collaborative affair with Dave Ellefson of Megadeth and Jeff Friedl of A Perfect Circle, six track EP Then I’m Gone (Rare Bird Recordings) is a much more personal affair with Bello playing almost all of the instruments himself.
Ghost Cult caught up with Billy Howerdel (also of a perfect circle) to discuss his new solo album – What Normal Was (Alchemy Records, Rise Records, BMG). Billy discusses his career up to now, the choice to use his own name instead of Ashes Divide, letting his 1980s influences fly on the new album, his upcoming tour dates, and some plans for a perfect circle too. Continue reading →
Billy Howerdel is best known as the songwriter and guitarist for A Perfect Circle, the band he created with his good friend James Maynard Keenan (Tool / Puscifer) after they met when Tool were supporting Fishbone for whom Howerdel was a guitar tech in the early nineties, before sharing a house together in the Hollywood Hills. Howerdel would work on his early material while also engineering for the likes of David Bowie, Guns n’ Roses, and Nine Inch Nails.
