If you, like I did, find yourself wondering what “Sessanta” means, the explanation is simpler than expected when considering the oddity of the players involved with the large-scale alternative metal tour that found its way to Hard Rock Live on Tuesday night. Sessanta translates to “60” in Italian, which makes sense—the tour is also billed as a “60ish birthday celebration for Maynard James Keenan.” Featuring the enigmatic Tool frontman’s two non-Tool bands, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, alongside the ‘90s weirdo-legends in Primus, the tour kicked off in mid-2024 and was enough of a hit—with crowds and the performers alike—to merit an encore leg, which found its way here this week.
Aside from a video intro and a 10-minute intermission around 10 p.m., the show consisted of nearly three hours of uninterrupted music, a remarkably effective proof of concept for shows where multiple bands’ performances are weaved around one another and together. The stage was adorned with three drum kits atop a large riser and plenty of additional gear scattered around the stage to allow for virtually no turnover between bands. The set was divided into short segments of each group’s material, beginning with A Perfect Circle, which was ostensibly the headliners of the night considering the rapturous response to its material and the fact that these Sessanta engagements constituted the supergroup’s first performances in more than half a decade.
What ultimately transpired was part concert, part Ripley’s-esque celebration of the strange, with video interludes that veered toward the surreal and moments that were literally playful, such as when a ping-pong table was brought out onto the stage for non-performing band members to square off, or when Keenan and fellow Puscifer vocalist Carina Round played Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots while singing. Not to mention the fact that each staircase leading up to the back drum risers had its own chairlift, both of which were used to great comedic effect throughout the evening.
For me, at least, the show did wonders to rehab Keenan’s reputation as an insufferable enigma, and seemed to indicate that, yes, he does love performing; he just doesn’t much enjoy performing with his most famous band. Having seen Tool a handful of times, I was expecting Keenan to lurk in the shadows toward the back of the stage throughout the program, which is exactly what he did during the night’s first song, a Perfect Circle performance of “The Package.” Instead, to my surprise, he almost immediately made his way down to front center stage, blowing out a birthday candle and playing rock, paper, scissors with a fan before settling into a show where he would spend the majority of the time in clear view.
As with other recent Keenan performances, the night was a strictly phone-free affair, so I have no photos to offer, nor any enlightening notes from the evening to expound upon. What I can confirm from memory alone is that the evening felt like a celebration of all things weird in heavy music, rather than just a celebration of heavy music itself. There were plenty of stand-up-and-cheer moments across the 31 songs performed—Primus had the most of them by my count, but A Perfect Circle’s “Judith” elicited the biggest pop of the night—but I found myself more enamored by the playfulness of the performance than the performance itself. My eyes would drift to the sides of the stage where members of the bands that weren’t performing would watch raptly, singing along or miming drum parts in the air. It was everything I’d come to expect a Maynard James Keenan-centered event would not be: loose, and put most simply, fun.
As for the bands themselves, my own reductive rankings after the show would indicate that Puscifer was better than expected, A Perfect Circle was exactly as expected, and Primus exceeded already high expectations. In all, a Sessanta show isn’t unlike an overlong blockbuster movie—one that starts a bit slow, saves its crowd-pleasing moments for the end of its first and second acts, then settles into a groove before crescendoing to a big finish, which in this case would be musicians from all three bands coming together for a show-closing version of Pucifier’s “Grand Canyon.” It’s a movie that may not win any Oscars, but it’s going to create an audience that will want to return again and again.
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