eMOTIVe by A Perfect Circle

eMOTIVe, A Perfect Circle's third album, landed on Virgin on November 2, 2004, timed to arrive alongside the US presidential election. It's mostly a record of anti-war songs written by other people, pulled apart and rebuilt until they barely resemble the originals, with Billy Howerdel producing and Maynard James Keenan laying his cool, unsettling croon over the wreckage. The first single was a hushed, funereal reading of John Lennon's "Imagine" that drains every drop of comfort out of it. "Passive", the other single, was an unreleased original salvaged from the defunct Tapeworm project, and it bristles with the band's usual coiled menace.

It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, and the band never toured it. Instead they went quiet: Keenan went back to Tool and started Puscifer, Howerdel made a solo record as Ashes Divide, and A Perfect Circle wouldn't put out another studio album until Eat the Elephant in 2018.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.