As The World Burns

Amidst societal strife and global pandemic, Maynard James Keenan returns with the most personal and human of his three main bands, reviving Puscifer with the group's fourth official full-length, Existential Reckoning. As the title suggests, this time things are more serious than usual and the core trio of Keenan, Carina Round, and Mat Mitchell crafted a politically charged takedown of the state of the world circa 2020. Although Reckoning stands as one of the most subdued – and least sophomoric – Puscifer albums, it swaps out their usual hallmarks in favor of substance and emotion, resulting in their tightest and most thematically focused output to date.

In 1969 – some three years before his self-titled debut solidified his stature as a pre-eminent string bender – Roy Buchanan (guitar/vocals) signed with Polydor Records and began work on his first full-length platter. In 2004, three-and-a-half decades later, the audio archivists at Hip-O Select finally issued The Prophet: The Unreleased First Polydor Album (2004)…