Mer De Noms - A Perfect Circle

After Tool released Aenima in 1996 they entered into a drawn out legal battle with their former label which lasted nearly 2 years. After the legal wrangling had finished the band members decided to take some time off and it was at this juncture Maynard James Keenan joined up with Billy Howardel and Paz Lenchantin to form A Perfect Circle. Howardel was a guitar tech for bands such as Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails and Fishbone and it was while he was teching for Tool that Keenan listened to some of the songs Howardel had been writing with Lenchantin. Keenan was so impressed by what he heard he asked to be the singer on the project and although Howardel had ...

I am a big Tool fan and i thought that nothing could live up to Tool, but i was wrong. A perfect circle are amazing and this albums proves that. In the short time that this album has been out, it has managed to become one of my favourite albums. The Hollow (which is the first track) is just monumentous, it has a real energy, which just does something to you, just like Tool. The sixth (?) track "3 Libras" also doessomething to you but in another way, this track is slower, but still moves you, infact all of the tracks on this album do. When i first got the album i wasn't that into it, but with more listens the more you like it, until you cannot take it off ...

Mer de Noms is the first album from A Perfect Circle. The album features Tool frontman Maynard Keenan and therefore comparisons to Mr. Keenan's other band are inevitable and unavoidable so I'll cut right to the chase. I enjoy Mer de Noms better than the majority of Tool's output. I'm sure many will disagree with me but I think Mer succeeds as a coherent whole far better than either Undertow or Aenima. Few actually realize that this Sea of Names (Mer de Noms) is the brainchild of guitarist Billy Howerdel. He had apparently written a number of songs and showed them to Maynard who loved them and convinced Howerdel that he was the man to have on ...