Puscifer At Warner Theatre, Washington DC 11-4-2022

Puscifer brought their ‘Existential Reckoning Tour 2.0 – Let the Probing Continue’ tour to the nation’s capital Friday night. The band is fresh off their double live stream event, V is for Versatile and Parole Violator which streamed over Halloween weekend. For those who may have missed the live streams don’t sweat, you can still purchase limited merchandise at puscifertv.com. Fans can also purchase the band’s latest release Existential Reckoning, which was released last October HERE.

Special guest, Night Club from L.A. consisting of Mark Brooks and vocalist Emily Kavanaugh got things started for the night. The band calls their music, ‘dark electronic pop’ and did a great job filling the support role for the night. Night Club played a brief six song set which featured the 2018 single, “Candy Coated Suicide” and wrapped up with “California Killed Me” from their 2020 release, Die Die Lullaby.

Puscifer took to the stage right around nine to a packed Warner Theatre. Like Maynard’s other bands Puscifer has a strict no cell phone policy during the show so it was only fitting for the band to reiterate that with a quick video before taking the stage. The video consists of Agent Dick Merkin warning the audience against using their cell phones during the show, and mentions anal probing as one of the consequences. At the conclusion of the video the secret ingredient of spam is revealed, that being those fans who chose to use their cell phones to take pictures or videos during the show.

Once the video concluded the set kicked off with “Bread and Circus” the opening track off of the latest release, Existential Reckoning. The show was broken down into three segments with the first segment consisting entirely of material from Existential Reckoning. At the conclusion of “UPGrade,” Agent Dick Merkin returned to the video screens to discuss aliens and the cloning of celebrities. Once the video ended the band kicked off the second, which included some older material including my personal favorites, “The Remedy,” “Momma Sed,” and “The Humbling River.” At the end of the six song segment there was a brief intermission with Agent Dick Merkin once again returning to the large video screens to continue discussing aliens and cloning, even suggesting that Maynard was a Wendy O. Williams clone. As the intermission ended and fans returned to their seats, Billy D. with drink in hand appeared on stage and would take over for the rest of the night. During the course of the night aliens routinely appeared on stage to dance or chase members of the band around on the stage. For Billy D. they kept his glass full, although he often questioned what exactly they were giving him. The closing segment was a five song set that included “Conditions of My Parole,” and wrapped up with “Bedlamite.”

This tour’s production is top notch and a must see for any Puscifer fan! Fans can follow all that is Puscifer HERE.