MAYNARD JAMES KEENAN Talks About Covering QUEEN, ACCEPT On New PUSCIFER EP

PUSCIFER, the Northern Arizona-based band helmed by Maynard James Keenan (TOOL, A PERFECT CIRCLE),will release an eight-song EP titled "Donkey Punch The Night" on February 19 via Puscifer Entertainment. The collection features two new songs written by Keenan and PUSCIFER cohorts Mat Mitchell, Carina Round and Josh Eustis: "Breathe" and "Dear Brother" as well as two covers: QUEEN's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and ACCEPT's "Balls To The Wall".

"We had a couple of bugs up our butt to mess around with 'Bohemian Rhapsody' and I had fun with it," Maynard tells Australia's Moshcam.com. "It's one of my favourite songs so it's almost like karaoke, but for real… We did a straight cover. There's nothing broken about that song and we tried to respect the original format as closely as we could, but, of course, it's going to have our signature on it."

On covering "Balls", Keenan said, "I was just online and saw [former ACCEPT singer] Udo [Dirkschneider] prancing around doing 'Balls To The Wall' and I was, like, 'I wanna do that!'"

"Donkey Punch The Night" was recorded in Jerome, Arizona in Keenan's Caduceus Cellars with the same roster from 2011's "Conditions Of My Parole" (Keenan, Mitchell, Round, Eustis, Matt McJunkins and Jeff Friedl) and guests Zac Rae (piano),Juliette Commagere (vocals),Josh Morreau (bass) and Claire Acey (vocals). Remixes of the four songs round out the release with contributions from Los Angeles techno wizard Drumcell, Big Black Delta (a.k.a. Jonathan Bates, formerly of MELLOWDRONE and touring guitarist for M83),Sonoio (Italian multi-instrumentalist Alessandro Cortini of MODWHEELMOOD and touring keyboard player for MUSE and NINE INCH NAILS) and Central American DJ Silent Servant, who is well known for his mash-up of post-punk and techno.

Asked what's next for PUSCIFER, Keenan told Moshcam.com, "We have a few things on the back burner but the project has always been of the mind to release a couple of tracks at a time. The last album was a bit of a departure from that, because we were on a roll and we were like 'screw it, let's finish an album.' We'll probably just record a couple more songs and put them out at the end of the year or start of 2013. But if we end up on a roll and we get more songs in the pipe, we'll definitely finish an album."

PUSCIFER recently announced its first tour dates outside of North America with the band performing three shows in Australia as well as performances at Lollapalooza Brazil and Lollapalooza Chile.

Photo credit: Tim Cadiente; Left to right: Matt McJunkins, Jeff Friedl, Maynard James Keenan, Carina Round, Mat Mitchell, Josh Eustis