By Scott McLennan

The messaging and its delivery were never self-righteous — Puscifer provoked rather than preached.

Puscifer and Dave Hill at Boch Center Wang Theatre on April 4

Mat Mitchell on guitar and Maynard James Keenan as Bellendia Black at Boch Center Wang Theatre. Photo: Sam McLennan

The band Puscifer doesn’t just release albums of new material; it releases fresh, multilayered, multimedia art projects in which new music serves as an anchor.

Puscifer’s latest creation, presented Saturday at the Boch Center Wang Theatre, offered a markedly different chapter in the band’s ever-evolving storylines. The show had a smart narrative flow that wove in all of the group’s new songs released earlier this year on the Normal Isn’t album. The performance also pulled in material from the band’s previous records, presenting those songs in ways that fit the concert’s overall theme.

Singer Maynard James Keenan formed Puscifer, setting it up as a more theatrical and concept-driven project than his creative work with the bands Tool and A Perfect Circle. Keenan has fielded different iterations of Puscifer since the ’90s, but he brought the idea to the masses in 2007 with the release of the album V is for Vagina. The tours that followed introduced audiences to the denizens of the Pusciferverse, including the huckster Billy D, his beloved Hildy, and the nefarious Agent Dick Merkin.

Keenan and his core creative partners in Puscifer, Mat Mitchell and Carina Round, have used the band as a platform to skewer and lampoon the seedy and greedy elements that are corrupting our culture and politics.

But what happens when the objects of your satire rear up and take charge of the government? When the corrupt crackpots start calling the shots? When mean, self-centered thugs award themselves the stamp of approval and the vulnerable get the boot and the fist?

Puscifer responded with Normal Isn’t, a lineup of songs that swapped parody for a darker, more sardonic tone. Keenan created the Goth persona of the brooding Bellendia Black, with Round transformed into Black’s vampiresque companion, Fanny Grey.

Black and Grey are mysterious figures whose storyline is unfolding in other Puscifer outlets, such as comic books and videos. At the Wang, the nature of Black and Grey was enigmatic — were they alien observers, protectors sent from another realm, or simply surrogates for anyone who wonders what in the world is going on?

Keenan is notorious for demanding audiences pay attention and not use their devices during his concerts. That message was integrated into Saturday’s show via a comic-book-style video of Black and Grey repeatedly demanded that the audience vow, “I understand.” The command set the mood for a performance that explored how groupthink can be manipulated by those with a self-serving agenda.

Carina Round as Fanny Grey at the Boch Center Wang Theatre. Photo: Sam McLennan

In the opening song “Thrust,” Keenan and Round bumped up against the myriad frictions of the day. The lyrics — the refrain contains “Trying not to murder is a daily battle” — tap into the tension we feel whenever we are assaulted by the news and nonsense that flow nonstop before our eyes.

Guitarist Mitchell, drummer Gunnar Olsen, and bassist Josh Moreau crafted a sinewy and throbbing musical backdrop for Keenan and Round. The show’s dramatic lighting design skillfully highlighted Keenan and Round as they fleshed out the characters of Black and Grey. The two singers stayed in character: sometimes they delivered the songs through elaborate vocal pairings, sometimes reacting physically via herky-jerky dance moves, on occasion maniacally storming around the two-tiered stage.

The show’s darkest clouds amassed during songs such as “Self Evident,” a searing indictment of a fool who is put in charge — perhaps an obvious target — and the harrowing “Bad Wolves,” which lays out how evil can and will triumph over good. The album Normal Isn’t and the live show it has inspired fiercely trace today’s amplified negativity back to its various sources — vanity, indifference, ignorance, and the willingness of the powerful to exploit our weaknesses for the acquisition of power and control.

The messaging and its delivery were never self-righteous — Puscifer provoked rather than preached. What’s more, the band did not abandon good ol’ rock’n’roll theatrics: the black-and-white lighting effects deployed during “Pendulum,” for example, enhanced the song’s menacing tone. A video of Bellendia and Fanny appearing on a TV cooking show added detail to their characters while injecting some levity into the cascade of foreboding set pieces.

The first part of the show peaked when it turned to “The Remedy” from Puscifer’s Money Shot album. The combative song gave Round and Keenan (still as Grey and Black) a chance to go at each other. It was as if the grand design of the dominators was working, separating people into disconnected and feuding camps. It provided a climactic surge before the evening’s intermission.

For the second act, however, Puscifer went in another direction, offering a sense of rebirth and hope. Opening with the hymn-like “The Humbling River,” Puscifer reasserted the value of humanity over the forces that were trying to degrade it. The new tune “Impetuous” and older “Grand Canyon” expanded on that theme, banishing fear and embracing curiosity — compassion replaced cruelty.

It wasn’t the night’s final song, but “Grand Canyon” came off as Puscifer’s attempt to answer Normal Isn’t’s dystopian urges. The song’s exaltation of “witnessing the majesty’’ was a rejoinder to the misery-soaked lament — fighting off the temptation to murder the next person who annoys us — that began the evening.

Maynard James Keenan performing as Bellendia Black at the Boch Center Wang Theatre. Photo: Sam McLennan

Still, before Puscifer was done, Keenan steered the performance toward a more traditional concert format with the comical swagger of “Conditions of My Parole,” which featured an appearance by comedian Dave Hill, who opened the concert.

Keenan broke character to deliver the night’s finale, “A Public Stoning,” the last of the Normal Isn’t numbers to be played. It was one more caution against disengaging from the world around you. The song has the makings of another staple in the Puscifer catalog — expect this tune to live on, even after some sort of new, and hopefully better, normal arrives.

Given how heavy the material Puscifer is trafficking in these days, placing Hill on the bill supplied a satisfying balance. His screwball comedy is rooted in his skill at appearing dumb as he slips in one smart line after another. The funnyman’s props, gags, and musical comedy contributed a welcome irreverence — a frenetic and dizzying half-hour that ended way too soon.

Scott McLennan covered music for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from 1993 to 2008. He then contributed music reviews and features to The Boston Globe, Providence Journal, Portland Press Herald, and WGBH, as well as to The Arts Fuse. He also operated the NE Metal blog to provide in-depth coverage of the region’s heavy metal scene.