A Perfect Circle – Eat the Elephant

Supposed butt-rock supergroup A Perfect Circle (Billy Howerdel is just a glorified guitar tech, so they’re really not a supergroup) are finally back with a new auditory abortion, and they’ve only been keeping their musically-tasteless, brain-dead, trailer-trash fan base waiting for 14 short years (they really didn’t notice, meth is a powerful drug). One can only guess the “band” (it’s more like a project) were just off farting around fixing motorcycles, winning house cash at poker night, and motor-boating babies or whatever douches that play this kind of shitty “faux-art music for people that teach guitar lessons” (it’s so progressive, man) do in their spare time. Actually (and I’m not making this shit up), this is what A Perfect Circle’s frontman, Maynard James Keenan from the band Tool – the only band worse than A Perfect Circle – was doing for those 14 years: he was running a winery and restaurant in rural Arizona. What a tool.

If you care about “art-metal” or that old-school Tool/A Perfect Circle sound, you may be disappointed. Eat The Elephant is all over the place. It’s completely out-of-focus and lacks any point whatsoever. It’s almost like it was made by an out-of-touch old guy that spent the last 14 years running a winery. Some fans will try and justify this record as some kind of Pink Floyd homage record, but really it’s just a bunch of mish-mash bullshit, kind of like a Pink Floyd record.

Some songs on it are soft and whiny like that British band Keane trying to write an even more boring/depressing album than usual, but without any hooks. Other songs are just generic radio-friendly butt-rock, like Godsmack trying to out Godsmack themselves. Lyrically though, it’s still the same trite, cheesy, cringeworthy lyrics that A Perfect Circle/Tool are known for, so fans of this garbage will love that, at least.

Some of the really horrid, migraine-inducing lyrics include…“Try braving the rain/ Try lifting the stone/ Try extending a hand/ Try walkin’ your talk or GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAAAAY!” and “We have been overrun by our animal desire/ Addicts of the immediate keep us obedient and unaware/ Feeding this mutation, this Pavlovian despair.” Real genius shit.

The worst thing is the cover art, though. It’s a Spencer’s Gifts Employee Of The Month/Jared Leto from Suicide Squad Joker Impersonator holding a sea creature, not an elephant. Rumor has it he gets paid for his appearances in vape juice.

A Perfect Circle 
Eat The Elephant 
[BMG]