MTV News Online

After making the rounds with Nine Inch Nails and impressing that band's notoriously rabid fanbase, A Perfect Circle will kick off their own headlining tour Aug. 18 in Boston.

The brainchild of guitarist Billy Howerdel and Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan, the group is supporting its debut album, Mer de Noms. Sunna will be the tour's opening act.

The cross-country trek will once again find Howerdel and bandmates Josh Freese, Paz Lenchantin and Troy Van Leeuwen providing a bombastic musical backdrop for the soaring emotional vocals that have been Keenan's trademark with A Perfect Circle and Tool. The frontman, who seems to set the bar fairly high for himself in the studio, said he has no problem reaching that same intensity onstage.

"The music is what took me there to begin with," Keenan said. "As long as the music is there and the people that are playing are committed to pushing those rhythms and those notes and that geometry where it goes, you just go there. Like when Roberta Flack sings 'Killing Me Softly,' you can hear that song whenever, and if you're a fan of that song, it just gets you."

After the tour wraps in mid-September, Keenan is due to join his Tool bandmates (drummer Danny Carey, bassist Justin Chancellor and guitarist Adam Jones) to finish writing and begin recording Tool's long-awaited new album.

A Perfect Circle tour dates:

Aug. 18; Boston, Mass.; Avalon

Aug. 19; New York, N.Y.; Roseland

Aug. 20; Philadelphia, Pa.; Electric Factory

Aug. 21; Washington, D.C.; Nation

Aug. 23; Atlanta, Ga.; Tabernacle

Aug. 25; Detroit, Mich.; State Theatre

Aug. 26; Cleveland, Ohio; Agora

Aug. 27; Chicago, Ill.; Riviera Theatre

Aug. 29; Minneapolis, Minn.; TBA

Aug. 30; Kansas City, Mo.; Memorial Hall

Sept. 1; Denver, Colo.; TBA

Sept. 2; Salt Lake City, Utah; Salt Air Pavilion

Sept. 4; Seattle, Wash.; Paramount

Sept. 5; Portland, Ore.; TBA

Sept. 6; San Francisco, Calif.; Warfield

Sept. 8; Los Angeles, Calif.; Palladium

Sept. 10; San Diego, Calif.; TBA

Sept. 12; Phoenix, Ariz.; TBA

Sept. 14; Dallas, Texas; Bronco Bowl

Sept. 15; Austin, Texas; TBA

Sept. 16; Houston, Texas; Ariel Theatre

— Robert Mancini