A Perfect Circle
A Perfect Circle is an alternative rock band formed in 1999 by guitarist Billy Howerdel and Tool singer Maynard James Keenan. The band's first lineup included Paz Lenchantin on bass, guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, and Tim Alexander on drums. The final lineup of the band featured Marilyn Manson bassist and former Nine Inch Nails member Jeordie White; former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha; and session drummer Josh Freese, best known for his work with Nine Inch Nails and The Vandals. Despite constant line-up changes, the stylistic content of the songs has remained consistent with Howerdel as songwriter and Keenan as lyricist.
A Perfect Circle has released four albums: Mer de Noms, Thirteenth Step, eMOTIVe and Eat the Elephant. In addition, they have released a CD/DVD called aMOTION, which contains thirteen video clips and a series of remixes made by Danny Lohner. The band has not recorded or released any full-length material since they decided to take a break in 2004. Since then each band member has worked on their other projects such as Keenan's 2006 and 2019 albums with Tool, 10,000 Days and Fear Inoculum, or Howerdel's founding of the band Ashes Divide.
In a 2008 interview, Keenan announced that he and Howerdel have been working on new material, officially ending the band's hiatus.
Finally the band released their fourth studio album, Eat the elephant, in 2018, fourteen years after their previous work.
History
Mer de Noms (1999-2001)
A Perfect Circle was conceived by Billy Howerdel, former guitar tech for Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, Fishbone, and Tool. Howerdel met Maynard James Keenan in 1992 when Fishbone was opening for Tool. Three years later, Keenan offered to Howerdel, who was looking for accommodation, a place in his house in Hollywood, Los Angeles. This gave Howerdel the opportunity to show Kennan some of his demos. Keenan was satisfied with what he heard, going so far as to say, "I can hear myself singing them." Although his initial idea was to have a female singer, Howerdel agreed that it be Keenan, for This soon formed A Perfect Circle. They were soon joined by bassist and violinist Paz Lenchantin, ex-Failure guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, and former Primus drummer Tim Alexander. The band first performed at the Viper Club in Los Angeles on August 15, 1999. After a few shows in Los Angeles, they entered the studio to begin work on their debut album. Alexander was quickly replaced by session musician and drummer for The Vandals, Josh Freese, although on the song "The Hollow" the recording of the drum parts made by Alexander remained.
The band's debut album, Mer de Noms (French for 'Sea of Names'), was released on May 23, 2000. by a rock band that has debuted highest on the charts, selling more than 188,000 copies in its first week, and starting at number four on the Billboard 200 chart.
Howerdel had been working on some of the pieces, such as the tracks "Hollow" and "Breña", since 1988. Shortly after the completion of the recordings, the band began a tour. Initially, they started as the opening act for Nine Inch Nails on their Fragility v2.0 tour in 2000, but soon after they began a world tour as headliners, including the Canadian festival Summersault. >. Due to Keenan's fame as the leader of Tool, he often donned wigs to distinguish himself from his other persona. Mer de Noms was certified platinum by the RIAA on October 31. 2000, while the band continued to tour.
Three singles were taken from the album: "Judith", "3 Libras" and "The Hollow". Like many other bands, A Perfect Circle added little hidden details to their songs. "Judith" it is named for Keenan's mother, who suffered a stroke and was paralyzed when he was eleven years old. "Renholdër" is a reference to guitarist and sound engineer Danny Lohner and can be read Re:D.Lohner backwards. Lohner did not know the song was about him, even though his name is sung—albeit distortedly—in the song.
In Rolling Stone magazine's review of the album, Pat Blashill wrote that Keenan "adds an almost operatic angst to Howerdel's songs" and concluded by saying that "A Perfect Circle sounds like a desperate dream of what rock used to be. Perhaps that is the point'. The Allmusic review stated that "there is little doubt that the combination of Keenan's woeful voice and Howerdel's accomplished songs along with production achievements have yielded one of the best touches to what remains of 'modern rock'".
Thirteenth Step (2002-2003)
During the recording, release and touring of Tool's previous album Lateralus, from 2000 to 2002, the band experienced a period of inactivity. This fact made the members of the band dedicate themselves to other projects. During the recording of Thirteenth Step, A Perfect Circle lost two of its members, Paz Lenchantin and Troy Van Leeuwen. Lenchantin left to join Billy Corgan Zwan's new band in April 2002, while Van Leeuwen left to play guitar on the Queens of the Stone Age tour. Former Marilyn Manson bassist Jeordie White, formerly known as Twiggy Ramirez, replaced Lenchantin as bassist in January 2003, while Danny Lohner took over as guitarist. However, Lohner did not fit as second guitarist, so the former Smashing Pumpkins member James Iha served as a replacement.
The band's second album, Thirteenth Step, was released on September 16, 2003. With the arrival of the record came a new sound. While Mer de Noms has a harder, deeper sound, Thirteenth Step is more melodic and direct. Post-release, John Lappen of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "They were never a band to beat the listener over the head with brutal metal, but now they are even more song oriented than before; a change that illustrates that the band has taken the measure of writing catchy instrumentals that showcase melodic talent that wasn't as visible on their debut album". This new sound is audible on the three singles taken from the album: &# 34;Weak and Powerless", "The Outsider" and "Blue". After the album's release, the band embarked on a tour of the United States until the end of the year. Then, in January 2004, they moved to Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan to continue playing concerts, only to return to the United States. United in March and finish the tour, finally, in mid-June.
The album received generally positive reviews. Allmusic's review stated that it "has a sound with a musical and lyrical maturity that doesn't normally occur until a band's third or fourth album.' Yahoo! Music expressed that "it has its anthemic moments, but the real passion brims in the moody overtures where looming danger feels very close". Rolling Stone wrote in its attempt to summarize the album that "sounds more like the dark era of The Cure Disintegration [album] than any band any of its members had been in before," and went on to say that "Thirteenth Step doesn't pummel listeners into submission; calms them down with monotonous guitars, bass and seething vocals".
Emotional & Amotion (2004)
On November 2, 2004 (U.S. presidential election day) they released a third album, eMOTIVe, which contains covers of anti-war songs by artists such as John Lennon (&# 34;Imagine") or Joni Mitchell ("Fiddle and the Drum"). Emotive was recorded with current and former members of the band, though it is primarily the work of Keenan and Howerdel. The single "Passive" is an adaptation of a song by the extinct band Tapeworm, a project by Keenan, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and Danny Lohner. "Passive" was first played under the title of "Vacant" at an A Perfect Circle concert in Portland, Oregon on January 31, 2001, apparently without Reznor's consent to perform it. The song remained unreleased until its appearance on Emotive under the new title "Passive". Also appears in the film Constantine when John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) enters Papa Midnite's (Djimon Hounsou) club office in the second half of the film. The track "Counting Bodies Like Sheep" was used for the trailer for the movie The Taking of Pelham 123, while the song "The Outsider" (Apocalypse Mix) was used in the Resident Evil: Afterlife trailer and its final scene.
The album received mixed reviews. In the Allmusic review they said the album "runs flat and fails to rise above the bar set by the quality of the previous two releases". Rolling Stone praised half of the record, while criticizing the other half, as did The Guardian which said: "Reversions often limp due to the artist's inability to move away from the original and seek a new perspective". Ken Micallef of Yahoo! Music wrote: "The band builds on the power of their previous Thirteenth Step, applying hypnotic arrangements, proletarian melodies and droning rhythms to a collection of sounds absurd on the surface, but united by the powerful and dark instrumental approach to A Perfect Circle".
A CD/DVD titled Amotion was released on November 16, 2004. The DVD contains music videos for six singles; previously unreleased video clips of other songs, including three alternate versions and the final video for "Blue"; and three trailers made for Bikini Bandits. The CD consists entirely of remixes of the singles taken from Mer de Noms and Thirteenth Step, by Danny Lohner, Joshua Eustis, Massive Attack and James Iha, among others.
Rest (2004-2008)
The future of A Perfect Circle remained uncertain between "the end" or still "going on". The band became inactive after their concert in Denver, Colorado, on June 13, 2004. Keenan went on to work on Tool's next album, 10,000 Days, while Howerdel began working on a project with Josh Freese that eventually became the band Ashes Divide. In addition to Keenan's work with Tool, he released the debut album from his other project Puscifer, V is for Vagina, on October 30, 2007. The rest of the band also pursued other projects. Freese returned to play drums for Nine Inch Nails. White returned to Marilyn Manson under her pseudonym Twiggy Ramirez, and although there was talk of Iha's return to the Smashing Pumpkins with Billy Corgan for the 2007 tour, the idea did not catch on and he eventually began working on his solo album.
Both Howerdel and Keenan discussed the future of the band in various outlets between 2006 and 2008. In a February 2006 interview with Rock Hard magazine, Keenan commented: " I think [APC] is over. We pushed the project as far as we could, and I only see us playing together in a few years to do one or two songs, nothing more'. In an interview in May of that same year, Howerdel's idea of a hypothetical The band's reunion was similar to that outlined by Keenan. In the November 2007 issue of Spin magazine, Keenan answered the question of "will there ever be another album by APC?" the same as in 2006, saying: "Um, no. Maybe someday a song for a soundtrack. But an album? No". Despite these comments, in an interview the following month for Revolver magazine, Keenan discussed the recent activities of other APC members and hinted at the possibility of a meeting. During the interview, Keenan commented:
The real problem of carrying Tool and A Perfect Circle at the same time was that both worked the same way. Both are live tour bands with their record label, still working under the old contract mentality. So I thought it was time to let Perfect Circle run for now and let Billy explore himself. It is hard for a guy who went from being a guitar technician [of Tool] to belong to a band with a famous and pretentious singer and have to live in the shadow. It was important for Billy to do his things and explore his own sound and let people hear what he has to say for himself, and then we'll come back and do something with A Perfect Circle.Maynard James Keenan RevolverDecember 2007
Although the band's official website has offered no sign of whether or not the band will get back together, news kept coming through Keenan of the existing band. In Puscifer's May 2008 newsletter, Keenan spoke again about the state of A Perfect Circle:
As many of you have heard, Billy and I are involved in our own small projects right now. His name is Ashes Divide and mine is called Puscifer... Note that A Perfect Circle and Tool They're still alive and well. This is just more.Maynard James Keenan Newsletter May 2008
Return (2008-2017)
On December 9, 2008, blabbermouth.net wrote that Keenan announced on The Pulse of Radio that he and Howerdel had been writing new music for A Perfect Circle. However, Keenan also commented that the band has no plans to tour again on a large scale, or even to write and record a new album. He said that instead, they were going to focus on "one or two songs at a time," which will most likely be released via the Internet, rather than on CD. Keenan went so far as to say that CDs have become "plastic records that don't matter to anyone anymore." But it wasn't until mid-2010 that they started talking about their return on their respective Twitter accounts. In September they announced new tour dates where they were going to play one of the three albums in their catalogue; one per night. The lineup for the tour was announced to be Maynard James Keenan, Billy Howerdel, Josh Freese, Matt McJunkins and James Iha. Josh Freese left the band in 2012.
In 2013 they participated in the Lollapalooza Chile Festival, held in the O'Higgins Park in Santiago. Keenan also performs with his band Puscifer at the event.
Eat the Elephant (2017-present)
In October 2017, A Perfect Circle unveiled the release of their new single titled The Doomed, which will be included on the band's new album.
Follow-up recording sessions for the album began in mid-2017, slowed down for a few months while the band toured North America, and resumed during a final intense period in late 2017 and January 2018. As of November, Howerdel reported that 15 songs were in contention for the album, though he conceded that things changed frequently, with some songs, such as "The Doomed" which quickly developed from scratch based on a small idea that he pitched to Keenan.
Eat the Elephant was released in April 2018 through the BMG Rights Management (BMG) record label.
Influences
Howerdel cited among his influences, several albums that have had an impact on his playing: Adam Ant with Kings of the Wild Frontier from his hybrid along with pirate music with a touch of music American Indian, Siouxsie And The Banshees with Tinderbox as "one of the most intense records I've ever heard" and its "intense atmosphere", Ozzy Osbourne with Diary of a Madman as «Randy Rhodes was a big influence on me, especially when I started», he also named the British band Depeche Mode (Especially in Eat The Elephant) and finally The Cure with Pornography, which he described as «intense atmospheric another record".
Members of the band
- Timeline
Discography
- Albums of study
- 2000: Mer de Noms
- 2003: Thirteenth Step
- 2004: Emotive
- 2018: Eat the Elephant