Weird Music Wednesday: “Seven One” by Puscifer

Maynard Might Be Getting Older, But He Isn’t Getting Normal

Feb 11, 2026

Released just this past Friday (February 6th, 2026) Puscifer’s fifth studio outing, Normal Isn’t, feels like a jagged, neon-lit transmission from a parallel timeline even more dystopian than the one we find ourselves in currently… the Wi-Fi may be spotty but I bet the wine is excellent. After the synth-heavy, alien-abduction vibes of 2020’s Existential Reckoning, the trio—Maynard James Keenan, Mat Mitchell, and Carina Round—have pivoted toward a sound that is leaner, meaner, and decidedly more “goth-industrial.” It is an album that manages to be both deeply empathetic to the human condition and utterly exhausted by the humans in it.

The record marks a significant point in the band’s evolution. If V is for Vagina was a crude sketch and Conditions of My Parole was a dusty, desert-rock campfire, Normal Isn’t is the fully realized architecture of the “Pusciverse.” The production is crisp and “heinously curated,” as Carina Round put it, swapping out the warmer tones of their middle years for fuzz-heavy guitars and cold, robotic synthesizers. It is Puscifer finally moving out of the “side project” shadow and standing as a cohesive, three-headed monster that is arguably more vital than Maynard’s other outlets at this moment in time.

While Tool is a democracy of prog titans and A Perfect Circle a refined rock machine, Puscifer remains Maynard’s most personal playground, serving as director and lead actor in a bizarre, multi-media theater/music project. It’s the only place where he can write a scathing critique of political polarization and use the word “bunghole” in the same breath without ruining the mood.

On this record, which is replete with musical weirdness, the “what-on-earth-is-happening” award must go to “Seven One.” Puscifer has always enjoyed a good detour, but this track is a surrealist fever dream even by their standards. It features a spoken-word narration by Ian Ross (father of Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails fame) that sounds like a vintage public service announcement being broadcast through a black hole. Just as you’re trying to parse the monologue, the song pulls in the “big guns”—Tony Levin on bass and Maynard’s Tool bandmate Danny Carey on drums. You have, arguably, the most technically proficient rhythm section in modern prog-rock playing a groove that feels like a haunted disco, without the standard verse-chorus-verse format, in favor of a sprawling, off the cuff 7/8 jam loosely synced with the spoken narrative. It is the sonic equivalent of a Salvador Dalí painting… How awesome is that?