A Perfect Circle releases a far-from-perfect disc

Shame on you, Billy. Shame on you, Maynard.

The sub-par Thirteenth Step cannot prepare you for the abomination that is Emotive. I don't know whose bright idea it was to make an anti-war cover album, but those responsible should be identified and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. What is irritating about this album is that any band could have covered these songs badly, but A Perfect Circle seems to have actively tried to make this album as unlistenable as possible. Upon hearing Emotive, it's hard to imagine that the same group released the groundbreaking Mer de Noms just four years ago.

This downward spiral can be attributed to Billy Howerdel (guitarist, re-arranger and instrumental creative control). His self-indulgent embrace of the cliché and expulsion of taste create a truly historic piece of muzak. Much of the album can't even be described as rock; it sounds more like the sappy symphonic refuse used to make movie trailers sound dramatic.

Even though all but two songs were not written by Howerdel, they all bear signs of his musical ravaging: the monotonous, plodding, soporific minor chord stew that is this album's trademark. In addition to the dull, endlessly repeated guitar riffs, the songs are saturated with keyboard drones, drum loops, delay effects, tedious string arrangements and swells of distorted fuzz - a powerful argument against Pro Tools. The band abandons the interesting rhythms and melodic playing of its past. In fact, not one of Howerdel's trademark Toolesque guitar solos can be heard on the entire disc.

Another thing we learn from this album is that Howerdel can sing. Why would any band with Maynard James Keenan, arguably the best singer in modern rock, put him in the position of singing "la-la-la's" (to quote the album credits) to back some thin-voiced novice? Keenan is obviously disheartened and remains almost passionless throughout the entire album, leaving behind some of the most sterile music ever recorded.

The album's opening track, "Annihilation," features Keenan whispering an anti-government rant, which is engulfed by a slowly poured soup of sound. The majority of the songs follow the same formula: disorienting, cyclical patterns that are layered over barely audible, yet hardly missed, vocals. The band has obviously mistaken contrived, apocalyptic disco for cutting-edge political, industrial rock. "Passive," one of the original tracks, was actually co-written by Trent Reznor (Mr. Nine Inch Nails) but sounds disturbingly similar to a track off of Thirteenth Step, making it a Tool rip-off rip-off.

Although the entire album is stagnant, some tracks stand out as being particularly onerous. The cover of John Lennon's "Imagine" is mechanical, symphonic trash. Even with real drums and strings, the track sounds like it was made on a synthesizer. As a matter of fact, the album has barely any dynamics at all, and the same can be said for melody, harmony and rhythmic variation.

"Peace, Love and Understanding" is turned into one of the dreariest pieces of music ever written. It's soft rock for suicide. Any political message is buried by the sheer weight of the music. Keenan is at his most emotional on the track "Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie," on which he growls the word repeatedly. It's passionate in the Paleolithic sense of the word.

There is also a painfully wretched rendition of "When the Levee Breaks." When Led Zeppelin played the song, it was some of the greatest rock and roll ever made; when A Perfect Circle plays the song, it's a five-and-a-half minute vocal loop and piano drone that is at just the right level of irritation that you can't quite tune it out.

But for sheer annoyance, nothing comes close to "Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums." The lyric is taken from Thirteenth Step and screamed and delayed over the single most jarring and obnoxious industrial loop I have ever heard—for over five minutes. It is the musical equivalent of falling down a spiral staircase coated with nails and broken glass.

The cover of the album is as contrived as the music within. A crumbling peace sign in the foreground overshadows a burnt-out city. On the inside cover, there are fake 1950s propaganda posters that read "Don't be Concerned" and "Everything's Going To Be All Right" with sinister soldiers in the background. There is also a picture of a field of grazing sheep being consumed by flames. But for all this imagery, there is surprisingly not much of a political message, other than that war is bad. There's nothing deep or meaningful being conveyed, only the irony of an album supposedly about peace being based on extremely violent music.

Musically, too, the album is thoroughly depressing throughout. Keenan could sing about a merry-go-round and make you think that the world was coming to an end. It's painful to hear him sing this coldly after his phenomenal and powerful work in Tool.

Speaking of Tool, this album is a Tool clone, except for the utter lack of complexity, melody or any redeeming qualities at all. Even the holographic album cover is reminiscent of the cover of Tool's masterpiece Aenema. The biggest question this album raises is not what happened to Howerdel (his ego obviously overpowered his musicality) but why Keenan is still wasting his time with this band. Tool fans have been waiting for a new album for almost four years, and Keenan owes it to them to march himself back into the studio, deliver and stop touring the country with A Perfect Circle.