Album Review

Puscifer – V is for Vagina

• 26th Nov 2007

Ask MJK questions about Puscifer and you’re likely to get some cryptic response, spurted spontaneously from the imagination gland of his brain, commenting on the CIA infiltarting the music industry and the likelihood that you do not exist at all.

It’d be like asking Jesus Christ how did he turn the water to wine at that wild party back in 22AD? Chances are The Great One would be pretty blaze about the whole affair, after all, he did rise from the dead three days after his painfilled death.

It’s the same with Maynard. Anything you ask about Pusicfer is wasted if you never had the chance to talk about Tool; the reason the singer is able to make these experimental offshoot albums on major labels.

Admittedly MJK doesn’t do many interviews and with valid reason, he’s not very good at them, but the five albums Tool have produced span generations, with the maturity and evolution from Opiate to 10,000 days each increasing in epic value, thus aligning Tool with the likes of Pink Floyd and more recently Radiohead, at the peak of modern music production. What do they have in common? They all won Grammy’s.

As for V is for Vagina, the first incarnation of a Maynard solo project, the main points of interest before you arrive at the CD player are the names of Brad Wilk and Tim Bob of RATM on the sleeve notes. The folded plastic airline safety guide is the coverart packaging depicting an alternative flight journey in the vein of Tyler Durden’s Project Mayhem.

It’s a brooding underlay of sound. Akin to NIN. The electronic beats and the mechanical cogs that grind the tempo over which Maynard is able to rap in his sick tones of a gargling throat. The Gollum and Beezlebub offspring always maintains a silken yet twisted beauty.

It’s quite beautiful but you have to be a hardcore fan to really like this. Then again, there are people who prefer Perfect Circle to Tool. Maynard fans are a strange bunch.