A Perfect Circle

Maynard James Keenan, vocalist for Tool, and Billy Howerdel, formerly that group’s guitar technician, launched the American rock supergroup A Perfect Circle near the close of the 1990s. The ensemble merges alt-metal and art rock by prioritizing lighter melodic textures and a dramatic atmospheric presence that occasionally adds strings or atypical instruments, allowing the project to shed early Tool comparisons and forge an independent identity. Across the years, participants drawn from Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Smashing Pumpkins, and Queens of the Stone Age have filled positions in the group’s rotating roster while Keenan and Howerdel stayed at its center. Their first album, Mer de Noms, appeared in 2000; the follow-up, Thirteenth Step, arrived in 2003. After issuing the covers collection eMOTIVe in 2004, the band entered a period of inactivity that ended with the 2018 arrival of Eat the Elephant.

In 1996, following Ænima, Keenan and Tool entered a protracted legal dispute with their former label Freeworld Entertainment. Two years later the matter concluded, permitting future recordings; feeling creatively drained, the band chose to pause. At that moment Keenan connected with Howerdel and Paz Lenchantin to create A Perfect Circle. The pair had first met in 1992 when Tool supported Fishbone, whose technician Howerdel played Keenan several original pieces that impressed the singer and prompted talk of future work together, though circumstances delayed collaboration until decade’s end. With Keenan handling vocals, Howerdel on guitar, and Lenchantin on bass, the trio added Troy Van Leeuwen, previously of Failure and Enemy, on guitar and Josh Freese, formerly of the Vandals and Guns N’ Roses, on drums.

The five members rehearsed without public announcement until their debut performance on August 15, 1999, at a Viper Room benefit in Los Angeles. Howerdel, long active as a composer and as a collaborator with Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails, served as primary songwriter and producer. A Perfect Circle delivered Mer de Noms in 2000; the set contained the hit singles “Judith” and “3 Libras,” entered the Billboard 200 Top Five, and later achieved platinum status. The band supported Nine Inch Nails on the Fragility Tour that year yet soon drew its own headline crowds. A brief interlude between albums let Keenan rejoin Tool for the release and promotion of Lateralus in 2001.

Meanwhile work on the second A Perfect Circle album advanced. Lenchantin and Van Leeuwen, each occupied elsewhere, were replaced by Jeordie White of Marilyn Manson and Danny Lohner of Nine Inch Nails. Keenan rejoined the sessions in early 2003, and Thirteenth Step followed months later, opening at number two on the Billboard 200. Darker and broader in scope, the record yielded the Top Five rock-chart singles “Weak and Powerless” and “The Outsider.” Lohner departed in favor of James Iha of Smashing Pumpkins as the band launched an international tour.

Upon completing that run, A Perfect Circle issued the politically charged anti-war covers album eMOTIVe in 2004. The collection reinterpreted John Lennon’s “Imagine,” Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” and Depeche Mode’s “People Are People,” while also introducing the new track “Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drum” and “Passive,” a long-sought fan favorite written by Keenan, Howerdel, Lohner, and Trent Reznor for the abandoned Tapeworm project.

Shortly after the companion DVD aMOTION—which paired the band’s videos with a remix disc—A Perfect Circle began a hiatus exceeding ten years. During the break Keenan recorded with Tool and his solo outlet Puscifer, while Howerdel formed Ashes Divide. Occasional reports of new material surfaced, yet the group resurfaced onstage in 2010 and placed the new song “By and Down” on the 2013 greatest-hits set Three Sixty. Another five years passed before a full return.

Late in 2017 the musicians reconvened for a U.S. tour and previewed studio activity with the single “The Doomed,” their first new song in more than a decade. “Disillusioned” and “TalkTalk” followed in early 2018. That April the band released its fourth album, Eat the Elephant, featuring an updated lineup that incorporated Matt McJunkins of Eagles of Death Metal and Jeff Friedl of Puscifer alongside Keenan, Howerdel, and Iha. As politically engaged as eMOTIVe and more melodic than Thirteenth Step, the record marked the first occasion the group enlisted an outside producer, Dave Sardy. Subsequent years brought touring in support of the album before attention shifted elsewhere: Keenan revived Puscifer and Tool, while Howerdel issued the solo album What Normal Was. In 2024 A Perfect Circle joined Puscifer and Primus for a tour marking Keenan’s 60th birthday, an event whose 2014 predecessor, Cinquanta, received a live-album release that March; ahead of the dates the three acts also dropped the Sessanta E.P.P.P., containing one new track from each group.