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 title: Tool's Maynard Prepares A Perfect Circle Debut
author: Robert Mancini



From http://www.mtv.com/news/headlines/000306/story11.html

3.6.00 18:00 EST

It looks like Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan now has two highly 
anticipated albums to keep an eye on.

While Tool's long-awaited follow-up to 1996's "Aenima" continues to lurch
forward, Keenan's other band, A Perfect Circle, has inked a deal with
Virgin Records. Virgin will deliver the band's first album, "Mer De Noms,"
to stores on May 23 and the album's first single, "Judith,"  is expected
to hit radio in April.

Virgin notes that the band (Keenan, guitarist Billy Howerdel, guitarist
Troy Van Leeuwen, bassist Paz Lenchantin, and drummer Josh Freese) also
plans to tour behind the album this year, though details remain to be
hammered out.

Howerdel, a guitar tech with Tool as well as the Smashing Pumpkins and
Nine Inch Nails, produced and co-wrote the twelve songs comprising the
group's debut.

The band made its official debut last August at Los Angeles' Viper Room
and staged a larger coming-out party at last October's Coachella Art and
Music Festival (see "Tool's Maynard To Roll Out 'Perfect Circle' At
Coachella").

The folks at Virgin seem thrilled by the development, with Virgin Music
Group Worldwide vice chairman Nancy Berry calling the album a "global
priority for Virgin."

Of course, all this means you aren't likely to see a new Tool album
anytime soon. Tool's manager, Ted Gardner, told MTV News that Maynard's
work with A Perfect Circle is not interfering with work on the new Tool
album, and that all parties were careful to give Maynard enough time to
devote himself to A Perfect Circle without sacrificing Tool's next effort.
Gardner said that the rest of the band is still writing and editing
material for the next Tool album and that Keenan's Tool counterparts
continue to be fully supportive of the singer and A Perfect Circle.

-- Robert Mancini

Posted to t.d.n: 03/08/00 00:12:07