Historically, Puscifer may have been called many things – weird, vulgar, groovy, obtuse… – but one shared classification has to be simply “entertaining.” This categorization carries its own major shortcoming, though: for a band renowned for immersive live spectacles, the translation to the recorded format isn’t always a successful one, and the newest album, Existential Reckoning, definitely exhibits symptoms of this malady. Lacking the ball-out lunacy of V is for Vagina (2007) and its multiple subsequent remix EPs, or the successful application in 2011 of avant-garde to industrial of Conditions of my Parole, or even the mature songwriting of Money Shot (2015), Existential Reckoning is a laid-back exercise in electro groove and further reinforcement of Maynard James Keenan’s reputation as a...
