Puscifer released their fourth studio album, Existential Reckoning, on October 30, 2020. Touring was disrupted by the pandemic, but the record’s electronic direction began with a decision made before the sessions: Mat Mitchell wanted a vintage Fairlight computer musical instrument at the center of the writing.
Mitchell told Consequence that he was interested in the instrument’s character and how Puscifer could make it their own. Its familiar sounds carried associations with earlier records, but he approached it as a starting point for new material. “Bread and Circus,” which opens the album, grew from some of his earliest experiments while learning the Fairlight. The equipment helped establish a direction that the other musicians could develop.
That left room for the other two members of Puscifer’s core trio to change the songs. Speaking to RIFF Magazine, Carina Round described Mitchell accumulating musical ideas until Maynard James Keenan could listen and respond. Keenan might contribute a complete vocal, a melody or a rhythmic sketch; Round would then react to what both had created. The three rarely wrote together in the same room. Their parts developed through exchanges, with each contribution giving the next person something different to answer. For Round, making the album also provided a creative outlet while she was caring for a young child through lockdown.
“Apocalyptical” became the first single, and its focus on refusing to acknowledge evidence landed in a particularly charged moment. The song had been written before the pandemic, even though listeners could connect it to events unfolding around its release. Keenan explained to Consequence that he often began with broad ideas, leaving room for a story to mean more than one specific thing. Its official video was directed by Puscifer, Meats Meier and Ghost Atomic.
Puscifer wrapped the release in a fictional investigation. Mitchell and Round appeared as special agents, with Keenan as an agent-in-training, tracking the disappearance of Billy D. The character had vanished in the Southwestern desert with a bottle of wine and a mysterious briefcase, while rumors pointed toward alien abduction.
Behind that fiction, the musicians faced a practical decision about finishing and releasing the record. Mitchell told Guitar World that they considered delaying it when lockdown began, knowing a tour was unlikely. They chose to continue. Their private studio allowed Mitchell to work separately while Round and Keenan used another room, and the album was completed under those conditions. Mitchell handled the recording and mixing, with production credited to him and Puscifer.
Once the mixes went to mastering, the focus shifted to performing the new material. For Existential Reckoning: Live at Arcosanti, they wanted the arrangements to stay close to the album because many viewers would be hearing the songs for the first time. That meant keyboards in front of the musicians alongside their usual instruments. Mitchell explained that Puscifer normally reworked songs for performance, but this introduction called for reproducing the recordings more faithfully. The film presented the album in full at Arcosanti in Arizona and premiered on release day, giving the new songs a performance setting when a conventional tour was unavailable.
The Arcosanti performance subsequently received its own soundtrack release on November 12, 2021, preserving the full album as it had been performed for the cameras.
