Giant outdoor escalators transport chilly gig-goers past restaurants offering spectacular rooftop views across West London to the British Airways ARC. Part of the newly revamped Olympia, this opened in June 2026 as one of London’s newest concert venues, futuristic, with a large hint of entering a Vegas casino. No one-eyed bandits inside, though. Instead, providing the sound, colours and light tonight is the brilliant experimental alternative rock act, Puscifer.
Puscifer
British Airways ARC, London – 7 November 2026
Words: Sean Titley
Photography: Manuela Langotsch
On The Normal Isn’t Tour, promoting their new album of the same name, support for Puscifer was provided by the American comedian Dave Hill. A Vaudevillian combination of sticky-floored back-room pub comedy with high-tech, art school, minimalist musical and theatrical precision.
Puscifer
If the Addams Family had attended music school, the result might have looked like Puscifer. Maynard James Keenan (legendary singer and creative force, also of Tool and A Perfect Circle) with tall Mohican and war-paint mask performed alongside singer Carina Round, in a Vivienne Westwood-style dress, scarlet, layered with exaggerated pointy shoulders, black PVC gloves and platform shoes, roaming the two stage tiers like matadors.
Matt Mitchell (guitar, keyboards), the other fellow protagonist behind Puscifer, masterminded the rest of the band, Gunnar Olsen (drums) and Josh Moreau (bass guitar), darkly dressed and shadowy.
Throughout the gig, the band were silhouettes on the two-tier stage, creating an atmosphere of mystery and impishness.
Maynard is well-known for his bands having a super strict no mobile phones policy. A stern pre-recorded announcement warned people to keep cell phones in their pockets “or be vaporised” amidst heavy blasts of dry ice. Setting the tone for the show. Serious but slyly humorous.
Outstanding amongst the stagecraft were the lighting rigs, which were run with perfect timing. Rows of white spotlights play tricks throughout the show, beaming like dreadnought cannons straight across the crowd, then crisscrossing searchlights cutting through the pea-souper fog of the Blitz and the neatest trick of all for the finale, A Public Stoning, forming cages around the musicians, trapped in their own dastardly, dramatic world.
This can easily be found online as it was the only song allowed to be filmed on mobile phones with Maynard exhorting those present to feel the difference in experience.
It was a point well made. The screens put up by others were immediately distracting and annoying, breaking the hypnotic effect Puscifer consistently create.
Shafts of white light were directed at the musicians too, turning them into stars, momentarily alone in the focus of the eye on the stage. Maynard and Carina’s mic stands held aloft like trumpet-blowing heralds, under the piercing light beams, is an image that will stick for a long time.
This, combined with rhythmic LED strobe/matrix panels that were perfectly synchronised with the drums and changed colours occasionally, matching the song. Blue for The Humbling River, which also saw Maynard shaking maracas in a primitive dance style.
However, the predominant aesthetic was the black stage and clothes, the red dress of Carina and the white throb of the lights.
From the back of the balcony at the British Airways ARC, the sound quality is crisp and pristine, the band exactly replicating the studio albums. One quibble, though. Puscifer play videos during their show. Fortunately, tonight not too many.
They are unique, as I understand it continues the elements of surrealism, Dadaism and absurdism that Puscifer bring to their live shows. But it is impossible to comment as the back rows of the balcony leave a restricted view.
Back to the music, Maynard and Carina’s vocal harmonies are mesmeric with Maynard often speak singing combining with Carina’s soaring melodies. Throughout, the drumming was tribal, bizarrely reminding me of a much heavier band, Soulfly, with their Brazilian rhythms. The bass locked into this pounding pulse-driven groove.
The lead guitar work was equally distinctive, with insistent repeating motifs, particularly wonderful on ImpetuoUs, bursts of distortion and occasionally ferocious punk edge to the sound.
The set was heavily taken from the new album, with older songs weighted towards the end. Whilst Normal Isn’t has been on constant play for me, it can be a little samey at times, and the older songs provided what was, for me, a needed contrast.
Early on, the audience were all attentive listeners but not much dancing, which coincided with the songs from the new album. The set ranged from the purple-lit serenity of The Quiet Parts to high-energy songs like Bullet Train To Iowa, providing fuller, punchy beats.
There was an Intermission with the word on the video screen over a picture of Maynard. For the more venerable attendees, the music to the intermission brought back memories of ice cream ladies coming round at the cinema and an expectation that a Hammond organ would rise from the stage before the gig re-started.
After this, crowd pleasers like Momma Sed, Grand Canyon and especially The Remedy finally really got the crowd moving. All leading up to the jolting heavyweight of Condition Of My Parole, interrupted by the light comedy of Dave Hill riding on stage on his little green bike to laughter and “Dave, Dave, Dave” chants.
A Public Stoning rounded the show off, leaving the fans in raptures at the performance.
In the spirit of the night, Dave Hill reappeared in a glitterball helmet again and played some pretty impressive guitar, in the end having to be wrestled from the stage by a music tech to the laughter of the departing and thoroughly entertained throng.
Dave Hill
Decked out in an Electric Callboy glitter ball style helmet and sleek white suit covered in designs of butterflies, peacocks and flowers, the comedian and musician Dave Hill is a surprise choice to the normal one or two lesser-known bands of other headliners.
Opening with a song, I Took Your Mum Out for Cigarettes, Hill set to work to see if his bawdy US humour would make the jump to the UK. At times it did, occasionally it faltered.
Clearly putting some time into Britishifying and, bless him, Londonifying his set, he raised laughs, but it could be a bit harsh. A list of pick-up lines that only work in London included ‘Are you like the Abbey Road Pumping Station? Why do you ask? Because I’d like to explore your inside after years of abandonment.’
Or a different thread of Developing Ads for Poundland. ‘We stock everything but dignity.’
Bringing on his band, he mentions this is the best rhythm section I could find at 4.30 in the afternoon. He and the band are excellent musicians, covering Maiden and Crazy Train amongst others, in between the jokes.
The crowd are laughing and a chant of “Dave, Dave, Dave” is drummed up a number of times. Hill capped off his performance by riding off stage on a green bicycle far too small for him, clown style, helping set the tone for Puscifer.
