A Perfect Circle somber, exultant in reunion show

Midway through the show, a good portion of the crowd clenched their fists, punched them in the air and pledged allegiance to their own mortality.

It was kind of like slapping the Grim Reaper a high-five.

"Everyone will have his day to die!" A Perfect Circle frontman Maynard James Keenan howled from the back of the stage, a dark silhouette perched next to the drum riser, his words as black as his coal-dust-colored wardrobe.

Much of the packed house joined him in throatily bellowing the climax to "The Outsider," a bayonette-sharp critique of the lust for fame and its self-destructive consequences.

This is A Perfect Circle's most finely honed skill: making defeat sound like victory, inner tumult an outer triumph, flaunting their scars like merits badges.

At a sold out Pearl on Sunday night, where the band finished up a brief five-city tour that marked the end of a six-year hiatus, A Perfect Circle didn't so much exorcise their demons as exercise them, working up a lather of doubt, longing and alienation.

This was the second show of a two-night stint at the venue, and after performing their 2000 debut "Mer De Noms" on Saturday, they returned the next evening to play its mordant 2003 follow-up, "Thirteenth Step," from start to finish. During the encore, they finished with a granite-hard take on The Cure's "Lovesong" and turned John Lennon's "Imagine" into a menacing metallic dirge.

By turns somber and exultant, "Thirteenth Step" forsakes some of the bombast of its predecessor in favor of dusky atmosphere, with the band building its tunes up slowly before blasting them apart in the end in an explosion of volume and release.

It's an album of muscular mood music.

Normally, labeling a record as such would be a back-handed compliment, suggestive of something to be played in the background while doing anything other than focusing on the sounds at hand.

Aural wallpaper, basically.

But not with this bunch, who are adept at conjuring up dense, enveloping thickets of dissonance, texture and melodrama that's both jarring and meditative at once.

It begins with excellent, underrated lead guitarist Billy Howerdel, who brings the group's songs to life with his expressive playing, making his instrument alternately soothe with dreamy, hypnotic passages and screech like a 2-year-old in the midst of a temper tantrum.

If Howerdel sets the tone, hard-swinging drummer Josh Freese plows through the band's tunes like a linebacker smashing into a slow-footed QB.

The result is a mix of calm and concussiveness that Keenan steers toward the brink of an emotional abyss.

"Comfort is a mystery," he sang during a show-opening "The Package," which began with a whisper before gradually building toward a violent, teeth-gnashing climax.

From there, the personal occasionally became political, namely during "Pet," a song about fear-mongering politicos that sounded like armed conflict with its earth-rumbling bass lines and drill sergeant exhortations.

But though most of the show was decidedly overcast, posited on conflict both internal and in the cruel world at large, it worked its way toward a measure of resolve.

"I choose to live," Keenan sang during "Gravity," the final number on "Thirteenth Step," a song that, much like the band's performance on this night, was all about defying the downward pull of its namesake.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.