A Perfect Circle: Maynard James Keenan (vocals, gourd); Billy Howerdel (guitar, piano, bass, programming, background vocals); Troy Van Leeuwen (guitar); Paz Lanchantin (violin, bass, background vocals); Josh Freese (drums, percussion).
Additional personnel: Luciano Lenchantin (viola); Tim Alexander (drums); Draven Godwin (percussion); Keli Shafer (background vocals).
Engineers include: Billy Howerdel, Frank Grymer, Critter.
Recorded at Perfect Circle Studios, Exstacy and The Chop Shop, Hollywood, California and Sound City, Van Nuys, California.
Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan offers up something to fill the collective void of fans eagerly awaiting a follow up to AENIMA. Keenan teamed with Tool guitar tech and A Perfect Circle guitarist/composer Billy Howerdel for MER DE NOMS, which is both a band effort and an engaging hard rock album, recorded while Tool renegotiated with their label and other band members took a break. But don't be fooled; A Perfect Circle is more than a one-off side project.
The band isn't nearly as brutal as Tool; the musical textures are instead spacious and melodic. Keenan maintains his brooding, emotionally charged vocal style and his knack for conjuring bleak imagery. The track most comparable to Tool's music, "Rose," utilizes rise-and-fall dynamics and unpredictably breaks away to gentle strings, while "Judith" (the album's title is French for "sea of names," hence the song titles), explores free thought and warns against blind faith, and "Orestes" departs from the predominant guitar distortion with moody, powerful results.
What the critics say…
Rolling Stone (1/4/01, p.114) - Included in Rolling Stone's "Top 50 Albums of 2000" - "…A positively ancient metal, a gothic throb that leapfrogs over rap metal back to the sleek PORNOGRAPHY-era dolor of the Cure and psychedlic-Valhalla songs of Led Zep….refreshing darkness."
Spin (10/03, p.107) - "…On the ballad '3 Libras', Keenan sings with an elegance few could have imagined…"
Entertainment Weekly (6/2/00, p.78) - "…Less ominous [than Maynard's former band Tool], leavening guitar shrapnel with genuinely pretty melodies and frilly production flourishes - kinda like neo-Metallica, but with 'cojones'." - Rating: A-
Q (7/00, p.122) - 4 stars out of 5 - "…Echoes Tool's dark alt.rock dynamics in the stealthy riffing of 'Magdalena' and 'Judith', but it is with gentler songs such as '3 Libras' or the Led Zeppelin-influenced 'Renholder' that [they] truly shine."
Melody Maker (6/20/00, p.60) - 4 stars out of 5 - "…This is Killing Joke and Jane's Addiction; this is Soundgarden and Alice In Chains; Keenan's gorgeously intimate voice is shoved up front throughout and it's his throat's suckable folds that draw you deeper in…"
NME (Magazine) (7/1/00, p.45) - 7 out of 10 - "…Mystic atmospherics and haunting, uplifting vocals….[They] have created a work of morbid beauty. In terms of darkness, it eclipses nearly everything else."
