'A Well-Oiled Machine': Billy Howerdel On A Perfect Circle’s Long-Overdue Australian Return

1 October 2026 9:57 AM

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After 13 long years, A Perfect Circle are returning to Australia, and with new music in their back pockets, founding guitarist Billy Howerdel checks in to share his excitement.

A Perfect Circle(Credit: Travis Shinn)

A Perfect Circle Profile

When A Perfect Circle came together at the end of the '90s, fans knew it was going to be something pretty special.

Prior to the concept going public, there had been plenty of discussions between its members about what shape it would take. However, the key to the story was – the then relatively unknown – Billy Howerdel.

A guitarist since his early years, Howerdel came up in the music scene as a guitar technician, working for bands like the Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, and – perhaps most notably – Tool.

Fresh from working with acts such as David Bowie and Guns N' Roses, Howerdel found himself looking for a place to stay in Los Angeles, and Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan opened the doors to his home.

Howerdel had been working on music of his own, and as so often happens when musicians get together, ideas were shared, demos were played, and plans were made. Though Howerdel had initially hoped for a female vocalist, Keenan expressed his interest in the role, and the plans were set in motion.

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By the time that A Perfect Circle went public in August 1999, the full band featured Paz Lenchantin on bass (who would later join the Pixies), former Failure guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen (who would later join Queens Of The Stone Age), and Primus drummer Tim Alexander, though the latter would soon be replaced by Josh Freese, whose star-studded résumé was a dizzying read even back then

Speaking to The Music, Howerdel admits that despite an incredibly talented band in his corner, he wasn't particularly in it for fame and fortune.

"The only quest was to make music that was hopefully not going to be pigeonholed into a certain time," he explains. "[Music] that you could keep listening to as time goes on."

Indeed, the music was timeless. Debut album Mer de Noms arrived in 2000, peaking at No. 4 in the US and No. 2 in Australia. Thirteenth Step would follow in 2003, and 2004 brought with it the powerful Emotive, a record predominantly full of covers that hoped for its listeners to be less politically apathetic.

As the releases arrived, so too did shifts in the band's line-up. Van Leeuwen's tenure saw him replaced by the likes of Nine Inch Nails' Danny Lohner and then the Smashing Pumpkins' James Iha, while Lenchantin had been replaced by Marilyn Manson's Jeordie White (aka Twiggy Ramirez).

These days, Freese is back behind the kit, Matt McJunkins handles the low end, and while Iha is also on guitar, they're all joined by mainstays Howerdel and Keenan.

It's a line-up which has been largely consistent for some time now, and one which Howerdel is grateful for.

Given that the breathtaking Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins had once been floated as a potential vocalist, Howerdel notes he couldn't imagine what the group would have looked – or sounded – like had Keenan not stepped forward.

"It's like, what would happen if your parents were somebody else?" he offers. "It's a dangerous exercise to even consider. But it's funny, not even a 'careful what you wish for' [scenario], but in the beginning, [as far as] having an intention or having a target I was trying to hit, I don't think I was far off.

"I think when Maynard and I talked about it at the beginning, he knew I was looking for that sort of energy, and I think he brought a lot of that energy on the first album. There's obviously testosterone and masculine energy that he brought, but there's also a lot of the beautiful tenderness that I loved about Cocteau Twins and even The Cure.

"[It's the] more romantic kind of goth music from my childhood," he adds, "but having it brought together with a heavier backbone of music that I was also a bigger fan of. I think he kind of did exactly what I was hoping for."

After A Perfect Circle released Emotive in 2004, the group effectively went quiet for six years.

Keenan would focus his efforts back on Tool, formally launch his Puscifer project, and Howerdel – who had even offered lead vocals on the band's third record – would launch his solo project, Ashes Divide.

A live return took place in 2010, and a new song, compilation, and live collection emerged a few years later, but it wasn't until 2018 that A Perfect Circle released their fourth album, Eat The Elephant.

For Howerdel, this period of time feels just a few short years ago thanks to the "time vortex of COVID", but he remembers the era of the group's latest album as being a fruitful one.

"When we were starting the engine back up again, it felt like picking up where we left off," he explains. "Eat The Elephant was an album that we wanted to make right after Emotive, or close together, as far as album cycles go.

"It was more heavily melodic, [we were] starting things on keyboard a little bit more, or [trying] out there kind of guitar things that sounded like keyboard. It's almost like writing things from a keyboard's perspective, but played on a guitar.

"Now I feel like I'm in a different place, but still discovering it as I go."

Ultimately, it would take another six years for A Perfect Circle to make any further moves. During that time, Tool released their first album in 13 years, and Howerdel released a solo record under his own name.

This was never particularly the plan for A Perfect Circle, but ultimately, just the way it goes. "Maynard's got three bands, he's got a lot of ovens burning at the same time," Howerdel explains. So it kind of comes down to that.

"And it also comes down to where his interest is at the moment. Who's churning out things that are going to keep his interest going at the moment. For better or worse, that's kind of how it goes. But that's not to say it all relies on him."

Indeed, Howerdel explains that it also depends on how much music he's writing on his side of the equation as well. "It's like, 'how much am I working in service?'" he muses.

"I started thinking of it almost like writing a score for a movie. Your writing is in service of the picture, and I'm sort of writing in service too. – I'm doing what I really want to do, but picking songs that I think he's going to respond to, because he's got to be turned on at the end of the day.

"At the end of the Eat The Elephant phase, I just started to take a little break, have a little reset, and then think about what's next. And I made a solo album after that; What Normal Was. It had a very morbid kind of driver to it. Kind of like writing a letter, almost like your last will and testament kind of thing.

"But thinking about what the next APC thing was going to be," he continues. "I wasn't necessarily thinking, 'Okay, this is the next APC song that's gonna happen right after that Eat The Elephant tour." It was more moving on to what Ashes Divide was going to be, which would be kind of renamed as just my name."

The end of A Perfect Circle's latest hiatus came about in April of 2024 when Keenan's 60th birthday saw him put on a touring celebration.

Dubbed Sessanta (for those playing at home, that’s Italian for ‘sixty’), the tour also featured Puscifer and Primus (with the bands also collaborating on a three-song EP), and ultimately helped kickstart the latest era of A Perfect Circle.

"It was an interesting thing," Howerdel remembers. "It's not the same as going out on your own tour. It's just a different kind of feeling. It was more celebratory. It was more like being at a festival with really good friends, and it was one of the most fun tours that most of us had been on.

"It was this jigsaw puzzle, a production that no one had ever done. So that was just a challenge in itself, and it just made it a very communal kind of feeling. We wrote a new song called Kindred at that time, and it was a song that Maynard started.

"What he'll say is it's his scratch on a napkin idea, and he'll kind of flesh it out and make it into a proper APC song. So that was kind of the conduit, and I think it really came out really cool. He started these three songs, the Puscifer, Primus, and the APC song. That was kind of his birthday present to himself that we all got the benefit of."

It turned out that this was something of an opening of the proverbial floodgates for A Perfect Circle. This year, fans have received two new singles, including Starless in May and To Whom It May Concern just this week.

Reflecting on how the likes of Starless came together, Howerdel explains that his acquisition of a new practice amp left him able to work on material during brief moments of downtime.

"We're watching TV, someone has to go take a leak, and we have to pause the show or pause the movie, and that riff just came out," he explains. "I remember recording it on my phone, just leaning the phone up against the little practice amp.

"My wife and kids are in the background making noise, and there's pots and pans because someone's making popcorn in the other room. I just took that as the basis, brought it into Logic, and just started flushing out a song probably two days later."

By his own admission, he doesn't even remember what he was watching when the spark of an idea for Starless came about, but the circumstances aren't important – what came out of that period of inspiration was.

Even as he speaks to The Music, he's on a break from writing for A Perfect Circle. He's unable to say how much more music will be on the way, however, instead focusing more on the upcoming touring plans.

Those plans see A Perfect Circle returning to Australia for the first time in over 13 years this December, while Keenan's Puscifer project serves as the main support.

The last time they were on-ground in Australia was for the 2013 edition of the now-defunct Soundwave festival, sharing a bill with Metallica, Blink-182, and Linkin Park Incidentally, Puscifer's debut tour of the country occurred at the same time, with Maynard also pulling double-duty at the Sydney and Adelaide legs of the festival.

Though Puscifer visited again in 2017 (and Tool have returned three times since), it's been a little quiet on the Australian front for Howerdel.

"I guess it does feel a bit like we haven't been there for a bit," he admits with a laugh, reassuring it's nothing personal. "I love Australia. My first trip to Australia I ever took was as a guitar tech, and I wound up just staying there.

"It was the end of a tour, I met some friends in St Kilda, and just stayed for six weeks or something like that. So I fell in love with Australia as one of the first places I really got to experience outside of America as a young man, and I still hold it dear to my heart."

One aspect of the band's previous live shows that fans may remember is the strict ban on phones that A Perfect Circle had previously employed for their Eat The Elephant tour.

While Tool have long employed an approach in which fans are asked not to utilise their phones throughout a show before that ban is lifted for their final song, ejections for those found filming or taking pictures at an A Perfect Circle gig were threatened and occasionally acted upon.

While some names – such as Jack White – had gone so far as to get fans to lock their devices away in pouches, fans still continually break this crucial piece of gig etiquette despite names like Madonna and Iron Maiden even throwing their support behind the notion.

Speaking to The Music in 2018, Howerdel likened the group's request to leave their phones at the door to going to theatrical production.

"If you've ever been to a play or a movie, it's kind of similar," he explained, "you don't take out your phone and start filming, and let the people behind you stare into your screen."

These days, they've relaxed things a little bit and their approach is more akin to Tool's, and while Howerdel is happy to have made even a small impact on how things were received and how gigs are experienced these days, his current attitude is one which just ensures people enjoy the show they've put together.

"It's up to you how you're going to enjoy the show or not," Howerdel notes, "but it's also just being polite and not being rude to the person behind you who's sticking a phone in their face when they're trying to watch the show.

"That is one of the bigger contributors to the request."

The forthcoming trip to Australia will be the fourth for A Perfect Circle. Having made their Australian debut In July 2000, a failed plot to play the 2004 Big Day Out festival resulted in their own tour soon after. Since 2013, however, fans have been eagerly awaiting their return.

While Howerdel notes it's hard to say whether or not the group are attempting to make up for lost time, he does look toward these gigs with a hint of excitement – leaving one to get the sense he may wish he could be in the crowd for the shows too.

"We've just done a tour in Europe, and I think we're a well-oiled machine," he enthuses. "I'm not even just trying to be a PR guy, I think it's the best the band's ever sounded."

Thankfully, Australian fans won't have to wait too long to confirm that themselves.

Tickets to A Perfect Circle's Australian tour are on sale now.