With Pusicifer‘s new album, Normal Isn’t, Maynard James Keenan and company did what they always do, which is to say that they did something completely different.
“The challenge that we’ve placed in front of ourselves … is to do something different than the last album,” Keenan tells ABC Audio. “Not just for the sake of being different, just literally as a challenge to just kinda figure out how we can push ourselves.”
One way Puscifer changed up their approach on Normal Isn’t was with Keenan and bandmate Mat Mitchell‘s songwriting process.
“Normally, Mat’s presenting things and I’m reacting,” Keenan explains. “So a few of the songs, we kinda flipped it around where I’m handing him things. So for him, that was his new challenge, interpreting what my ideas were and coming back with something that made it better.”
Normal Isn’t certainly has a distinct feel compared to Puscifer’s last record, 2020’s Existential Reckoning. If Existential Reckoning was the soundtrack to a hedonistic dance party during the apocalypse, the world has fully ended on Normal Isn’t and explores the consequences of that new reality.
“I would say the last one was far more cinematic, trying to widen your perspective on what you’re seeing, what you’re looking at, how you’re gonna navigate it,” Keenan says. “And then this one is definitely Mad Max. We’re scrambling for gasoline.”
One thing that Normal Isn’t is not is subtle. Take the song “Self Evident,” which Keenan opens with the lyric “You’re an idiot.”
“At some point, you just have to say it,” Keenan says. “Trying to dress it up and kinda beat around the bush, so to speak it, isn’t working, so f*** it. You’re a dumba**.”
Normal Isn’t is out now. Puscifer will launch a U.S. tour in March.
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