Vagina airlines. It’s a flight worth taking. Sure it doesn’t look as luxurious as some of the world’s better airlines but Maynard James Keenan’s promise of shutting up the kids when their parents won’t is a service worth paying for.
Although just like any flight it has its fair share of instructions and preamble, but at least this time it’s humorous. Except Keenan is serious about one thing. No flash photography.
If you didn’t read your ticket or hear the multiple announcements from the Palais PA, then you got one final reminder of just how much the man despises photography before the show began.
In true Puscifer style, the live six-piece put on a show that you had come to expect from a man that also spearheads those other bands that were emblazoned across several audience members’ t-shirts.
With A Perfect Circle playing Soundwave and a Tool tour slated for April/May, this was a rare chance to catch Keenan’s lesser-known yet no less incredible side project.
This was the first time the multimedia experience had toured outside of North America and as the audience were informed before the show began, “this performance is just like a theatre show.”
While Puscifer still holds true to the creative brilliance of Keenan’s other projects, as fans of the band would know, humour and entertainment are both vital aspects to the experience.
A half an hour tour mockumentary precedes the outfit’s live set. With Texan couple Billy D and wife Hildy going on tour to make money after their trailer is broken into.
Wild spurts of laughter come from some members of the audience at the video, which is projected onto two screens either side of the stage. Yet after 10 minutes the redneck jokes begin to drag and the movie soon feels drawn out.
Although true to in-flight entertainment, the movies are never really that enjoyable anyway, right?
Finally as the film ends, humorous pre-show warnings are given, the lights are dimmed, and Vagina Airlines is ready to take flight.
An airhostess shows a couple of gentlemen to their seats before the band arrive. There are two rows of three seats on either side of the stage.
Keenan enters the stage decked out in captain’s gear, typically with a wig and a fake moustache for added characterisation. The rest of the band are dressed in flight attendant uniform, except vocalist Carina Round who dons a black dress.
The frontman, who enters vocalising the lyrics to ‘Queen B’ into a megaphone, sounds exceptional, while Round only augments the songs by adding her voice behind Keenan’s.
The two spend most of the night singing behind two individual frames, which give the audience a slightly odd close up view to their faces, yet the visual effect is undeniably spectacular.
While the songs are only interrupted by a few in-flight messages, both singers make use of the stage space, serving their faux guests drinks (maybe from Keenan’s own winery?) and hurling Vagina Airlines own brand of nuts into the audience.
In fact the first few rows spent much of the night ducking as Round kicked and threw multiple packets of the treats away.
Yet when the band weren’t trying to authenticate the theatrical, they were knocking out tracks from the band’s discography in a mind blowing manner.
The setlist, which was mostly made up with songs from Puscifer’s two albums V Is For Vagina and last year’s Conditions Of My Parole, also included tracks from the recently released Donkey Punch The Night EP; such as ‘Breathe’ and ‘Dear Brother’ (although thankfully the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ cover was spared).
Heavier songs, such as their cover of Accept’s ‘Balls To The Wall’ (also from Donkey Punch The Night), ‘Vagina Mine’, and ‘The Undertaker’ were slightly deafening to the point where it felt weird to be restricted to seating.
But the highlights of the night – just to name a few -came in the form of ‘The Weaver’ and ‘Rev 22:20’, which Carina Round sung solo (as Keenan sat down and leisurely read some of the magazines on offer aboard the ‘flight’).
Round’s voice is sultry, if not thrilling behind Puscifer’s ominous instrumentation; an incredible feat of the singer’s to stand alongside her brilliant crab-like dancing.
With no encore, the latter Vagina Airline messages saw Billy Howerdel and James Iha of A Perfect Circle board the flight to cheers upon which Howerdel quickly donned his hood.
Before Puscifer bowed out with ‘The Humbling River’, Keenan sat down to address the more serious side of his musical energies.
Giving the audience an insight into his beliefs, the frontman discussed his intentions of finding the ground between entertainment and art with this project. He states, to much of the crowd’s delight, “we’re not stronger, we’re not faster, but we’re more creative.” While he also expressed that “we will create with every breath,” as he formally introduced his band.
Keenan is commanding, as per usual, and the audience eats up every word, the man is simply inspiring.
The Puscifer live show does just as the lead singer intended, it’s incredible art, yet there are few gigs on Earth as entertaining as this.
Finally – an airline that doesn’t induce cringing, but how do you describe your love for Vagina Airlines without sounding like some sort of a pervert?
