The Mars
“We’re just a self-indulgent group of friends, painting how we feel.” – Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
“Not only are the Mars Volta a true prog band they are also, debatedly of course, the best.” – Jack Feeny
“Whaaaaaaa?” – All 6,579 current and ex-members of Yes, in unison
“Our fingernails sensed a revulsion, the flocks of aging boats that tumbled from a smoldering basket. Only hair remains. Only a compass remains. Are you happy now?” – Pitchfork
Albums Reviewed:
After the overwhelming (and somewhat
misunderstood by yours truly) critical success of their 2000 album Relationship of Command, post-hardcore (whatever the fuck that is)
practitioners At the Drive-In busted in two, with the normal looking white guys
forming an emo piece of shit band called Sparta and the two ethnic dudes with
afros indulging in their fetish for prog-rock with the Mars Volta. In a sea of generic pop-punk, emo and
nu-metal awfulness, the Mars Volta are a breath of creative fresh air about
whom I could say “combine X with Y with Z with…” but
instead will say “really like old-school prog-rock.” They’re the closest thing to a modern answer
to Yes I can find. Their vocals are dramatic
and high-pitched. Their guitarist and
drummer both have like eight arms. They
don’t have a cheesy Rick Wakeman-type keyboard player, but that’s because it’s
the 21st century and you can’t do that anymore. They write really long songs with multiple
sections, astoundingly complex instrumental interplay and lyrics no one in the
world can decipher but their author.
They’re not nearly as good in the songwriting department as
their forebears (like Yes, who they so obviously want to be it’s hilarious),
but they’re still MIGHTY entertaining, if slightly annoying at time. If you’re a seventies prog-rock fiend but feel kinda stupid listening to most modern shit operatic prog
metal crap awful bullshit like Dream Theater, the Mars Volta is probably the
band for you. If you like seventies prog-rock, but not all of it, and are by no means a fiend
(like me), then the Mars Volta will excite and interest you with their talent
and potential, but ultimately frustrate you with their inability to harness and
focus their potential. But they’re still
better than Dream Theater.
Lineup! I have a feeling this is a revolving door situation of some sort, and if it’s not, the fact that 95% of pictures I can find of the “band” contain only guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (left in picture above) and lyricist/vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala (right, ofcourse, in picture above), the two ex-members of At the Drive-In, can only mean that the egos of those two are very, very large (which, given the nature of their music, shouldn’t come as a surprise). Anyway, given that this is a prog-rock band, the fact that Rodriguez-Lopez is a fantastic and nimble guitar player and Bixler-Zavala sounds like he’s from thirty years ago in his yelpings is basically par for the course. The twist with these two is that they’re both Hispanic, so the guitar bits sometimes have a vaguely Spanish flavor (not to mention the occasional salsa break) and the lyrics are sometimes sung in Spanish, but Rodriguez-Lopez still wants to be Steve Howe (who, come to think of it, excelled at that Spanish flamenco guitar shit) and Bixler-Zavala sounds like Geddy Lee if he had balls, a range within what a normal human can hear, and a ready supply of nasal decongestant. As of now, the other members of the band are Jon Theodore (drums), Ikey Owens (keyboards), Juan Alderte de la Pena (bass), and Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez (Omar’s brother…I have no idea what he does besides that), but don’t worry much about them. I can tell you that Theodore is one helluva nasty drummer, but I am biased towards drummers, ofcourse.
And, onto the reviews!
P.S.: I should tell you I wrote the reviews for De-Loused in the Comatorium and Relationship of Command (which is reviewed on the Miscellaneous ‘90’s-‘00’s page) well before I wrote the above intro, so any weird overlaps and repeated statements are because of that. You know me. I don’t edit shit.
De-Loused In The Comatorium (2003)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Take The
Veil Cerpin Taxt”
Probably the most pretentious-sounding
album I’ve heard released in the last ten years not by Sigur Ros, De-Loused in the Comatorium makes one
ask the question: what precisely is
wrong with seventies prog-rock? Because
every band that unabashedly embraces that shit today (and succeeds) is
unabashedly praised by music critics and other like-minded hip people who enjoy
putting down Yes and E.L.P. (OK, sometimes they have a point) almost as much as
I like taking completely unprovoked and needlessly hostile potshots at Bono. Tool.
Sigur Ros. The Mars
OK, now that my anti-prog haters rant is out of the way (and it’s not like I’m even a big fan! I hate E.L.P., think Dream Theater is soulless ridiculousness, and only have anything close to full discographies for two prog bands, Yes and King Crimson. And I only think 4-5 King Crimson albums are above “decent”), I can move onto praising this band and this record. Because they do deserve it. And I will also grant the fact that this band is unique, in that they’ve injected 70’s vintage prog music with thoroughly modern sensibilities, including fast, crashing, energetic tempos and a total lack of any cheesy Keith Emerson prog keyboard clichés (the kind that make MOST modern prog-loving bands just suck all sorts of dick). The only song I really don’t like is “This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed” (either coincidentally or not, also the only song with a title that Microsoft Word won’t put any red or green squiggly lines underneath), whose main “I’ve been waiting for soooo long, soooo long” part is just fragmented and annoying, and whose remaining sections leave much to be desired, including anything interesting (and what the fuck is up with the drum solo at the end, huh? HUH??). Otherwise, the music on this thing crackles, spackles, and explodes with near-punkish energy filtered though a totally nonsensical, unapologetically pretentious Yes-prog outlook that’s both bewildering and exciting. It’s really neat stuff, if a bit tough to get a handle on.
I suppose the main problem with the record would be an inability for songs to distinguish themselves from each other. Not “sameness,” per se, because every tune has 3 or 4 distinct sections; just that the whole thing sort of runs together by the end like it’s actually an updated version of “Thick as a Brick,” only not as good. Also, as I’ve mentioned before, the atmospheric section in the middle of “Cicatriz ESP” is a total waste of my time and yours, but why do I keep complaining when there’s so much good music to be found here? The two ingredients at the forefront are without a doubt the wailing vocals of Cedric Zavala, which sound exactly like 70’s prog vocals, only less cheesy (just like the band itself), and the creative guitar blasts of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, who sticks closer to actual riffs than most of the band’s 70’s prog models, but does so in a very enthralling way (like how he often combines with some kind of rapid-fire snare drum sexiness for fucking exciting riffs, usually during the tunes’ choruses). There are some interesting solos and textures and generally, you know, weird goddamn sounds, like you’d expect to find in a prog album, but he’s generally measuring them with a desire to really rock out, so it’s cool. There are some occasional keyboard embellishments, like the organ in “Cicatriz ESP” and a generally strange sound in “Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt” that always makes me think my computer is about to explode when it comes in (and is REALLY FUCKING COOL). The musicianship is also fantastic, ofcourse, and is actually used to support the music, rather than show off chops for no reason like giant dicks (Hi, Dream Theater!).
Again, though, it’s not without problems. Some of the tempos here are annoyingly herky-jerky, and even though the powerful chorus-esque sections with rapid-fire snare drum hitting and guitar freakout are all cool, there’s also a similar-sounding one in just about every song (OK, maybe I will use the word “sameness”). My final opinion of record also seems very subjective, but here it is: I just can’t get a handle on it. I’ve listened to it like 10-15 times, and I simply cannot look at the track listing and remember how much of anything goes. I know that I am frequently enthralled by what I hear coming out of my speakers, from the guitar work to the excellent vocals to the sheer power of the band as a unit, but it seems to me that this record lacks focus and coherence. I’ll sum it up like this: Yes, for instance, may not have the rock and roll power of these guys, but at their best they had a laser-tight focus, and within a few listens a whole record’s general form and structure could be internalized. With other bands of that era at their absolute best (Thick as a Brick, the handful of times Robert Fripp stopped being a douche for a minute, the occasional Genesis song where Tony Banks doesn’t interfere too much, even some Gentle Giant I’ve been able to hear), this is also true. The records may be complicated, but you can get a handle on them. This album, as entertaining, interesting, and powerful as it may be, is still confusing to me even after this many listens. I’m saying it’s because of a “lack of focus,” but that’s just sort of a cop-out term for when you don’t really know what’s going on. I really admire what these guys are trying to do. They have talent and ideas up the wazoo, musical chops to die for, and they can even write a nice ballad when they try (“Televators!” Hee!). It’s not an exaggeration to say that, when this album catches fire, it is breathtaking (like the chorus to “Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt,” which is just about orgasmic). Just, I dunno, chill out for a bit here and there. One man can only take so many herky-jerky snare rhythms and ear-piercing guitar blasts at a time.
GoFunBurnMan13@aol.com writes:
Dude! You've never
heard At The Drive-In? That's like somebody who's only heard Wings &
never even heard the Beatles!!! If you like The Mars Volta a little bit,
it's a pretty safe bet that you'd like ATDI about ten million times better,
since they WERE about ten million & one times better. Also: how can
someone who hates Geddy Lee's voice so much get any enjoyment out of Cedric
Bixler on this album? He sings at LEAST as high on most of the tracks!
Another reason you should hear ATDI as soon as humanly possible: Cedric
sounded a LOT less operatic back then, more like a human being with emotions,
& mixed it up with some psuedo-rapping parts & lung-shattering screams
every once in a while too. Also, their music was a lot more
exciting(though way less proggish) than any of the songs on 'De-loused'.
So yeah, um, get Relationship Of Command. Right now.
As for this album, geez, I don't know. It's alright, but I mostly agree
with you about how unmemorable so many of the songs are. They all have
some great PARTS to them, but very rarely do they construct any songs that feel
cohesive, coherent, or worthy of their ridiculous lengths. I really like
"Roulette Dares(The Haunt Of)", but the rest of this contains too
much wankin' & wailin' for me(plus I don't really like prog all that much
in the first place). If you like this album, you should really check out
Cave In's 'Jupiter'. It's the same sort of "post-modern
prog-rock" approach, but it's slightly heavier, & the songs sound WAY
more thought-out & concise(even though they're pretty lengthy themselves).
They sound more like Radiohead than KC or Rush, so you'd probably be into
them.
And yeah. Hear At The Drive-In. Then review them on this site
because they're far more important & interesting than any of the other
bands on your "Miscellaneous 90's-00's" page.
Mike Noto (thepublicimage79@hotmail.com) writes:
This is a very strange album.
This is also a verrrry good album. This is
also a frustratingly unfocused album. Too many of the tracks here go
wandering off into free-noise sections that just aren't that interesting to
listen to, but enough of the riffs/solos/beyond-comprehensi
interplay is riveting enough to keep me listening. And Cedric's a hell of a
singer when he isn't wailing. Still, though, this is really unfocused at
times and the lyrics are unredeemed bad-trip babble.
A couple things:
1 - This band's far, far, far, far, far better than At The Drive-In ever
was. (ATDI - Worst band name ever.)
2 - The guy's name is Manuel Rodriguez-Lopez and he's a percussionist.
"Drunkship of Lanterns?" That's him. (Also the best song on here.)
3 - Apparently this is a concept album about a character named Cerpin Taxt,
who's supposed to be a stand-in for a friend of the band's who committed
suicide. These guys must do as much acid as Syd Barrett.
4 - Cedric and Omar smoke rocks. No joke.
Creative as hell and great, but...again, there's so much potential here. If
they just tightened up, they'd really be truly something.
Frances
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Cassandra
Gemini”
What was bubbling under the
surface on De-Loused is now painfully clear. The Mars Volta want to be Yes. The band can say all they want about “not
wanting to be labeled” and other such bullshit that all musicians say at
one time or another, but the Mars Volta is now the preeminent
progressive rock band out there in terms of popularity and commercial viability
(leaving Tool out as “progressive metal” and leaving Dream Theater out as
“shit”). The differences between the
Mars Volta and Yes and their brethren are the Mars Volta don’t use any cheesy
prog keyboards (though there are plenty of nice, tasteful, rocking organs and
crap tossed into the stew) and Cedric Bixler-Zavala occasionally sings in
Spanish. However, when he’s not
singing in Spanish, he’s singing in untranslatable gibberish not that far
removed from Jon Anderson-speak (tell me, what’s the difference between “the
ocean floor is hidden from your viewing lens, a depth perception languished in
the night” and any lyric Jon Anderson wrote between 1970 and 1977 except
that you can actually trace Jon’s bullshit to something (his fruity belief in
eastern religious doohicky I know nothing about)?). For those of you who want to cite the
occasional salsa excursion as something else “new” and “different” in the Mars
Volta, I counter that it is highly unlikely that Yes, Genesis, King Crimson,
E.L.P., etc. were aware of the existence of salsa in their stuffy Britishness, and that were Chris Squire from
L.A. and named Cristiano Squire-Martinez, then “Close to the Edge” would’ve had
some salsa elements tossed in as well.
Ofcourse, I’m using that intro
neither to praise everything the Mars Volta is doing to the heavens nor to bash
it to shit because it’s “longwinded” and “doesn’t make any fucking sense” (both
of which are true, ofcourse) like Pitchfork, which ofcourse gave this album a 2
after listening to one track and reading the lyrics sheet, calling it a “homogeneous
shitheap of stream-of-consciousness turgidity” (no, seriously, someone actually
wrote that), which is the most idiotic
thing they’ve done since some moron over there called Kid A “womblike” (yes, when I listen to it, the first thing that comes to
mind is definitely “amniotic fluid”).
Because the fact remains that, even though the Mars Volta’s music goes
on for way too long and still lacks the necessary focus to warrant a
five-track album of 77 minutes in duration, they can fucking play, and the moments when this album stops fucking around and starts
kicking ass are absolutely excellent.
Every track here has at least one of these moments, actually (which
they’d better, since they’re all, you know, really long), and again it’s the
band’s lack of cohesion, structure, and tight songwriting, and
most definitely not their passion, playing abilities, or
production expertise, that leads me to give a good-but-not-great rating to
their latest record album.
The record gets of to a pretty
powerful start with “Cygnus…Vismund Cygnus” (don’t ask, I have no idea
either…actually, just don’t ask about any of the song titles or
lyrics…I don’t know and I don’t care. If
I’m not gonna take the time to decode Jon Anderson’s musings, why would I even
give the time of day to Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s?), whose super-fast fusion-esque
guitar and drum poundings, after a quiet little acoustic intro, actually remind
me of sections from Yes’ Relayer, specifically the main riff part of “Sound
Chaser.” They’re not nearly as powerful or face-melting, ofcourse, and the vocal melody Cedric
sings on top can’t approach Jon for catchiness and songcraft (yes, I think “Sound Chaser” is “catchy”), but it’s still pretty neat and cool, which is probably
the best way to describe the album as a whole.
The best part of the tune is these brief descending vocal harmony breaks
Cedric sticks in there. The way he
layers five or six copies of himself to create something orgasmic is positively
(you guessed it) Yes-like. The problem
with the song is that it gets lost in its atmospheric middle instead of really building on its ass-kicking intro part, before returning to said intro part,
reinserting said descending vocal harmony awesome thingy, and ending the song
with a few minutes of headphone noise trickery that probably sound better if
it’s 2am, the lights are off, and you’re stoned. This is a consistent problem with the album:
go-nowhere atmospheric pothead headphone trickery. Sure, plenty of seventies bands did similar
things, but their excursions always felt like they were going somewhere, like the five-minute bridge of “Close to the Edge” or Pink Floyd’s
“On the Run” or something. They have a
distinct purpose.
Maybe the three-minute dicking ending to the shockingly single-length
main part of “The Widow” (a Spanish-flavored, fat, rocking almost power-ballad thing that KICKS ASS) serves a purpose to Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. I just have no idea what it is. It sounds really fucking cool, yeah,
but only for thirty seconds. After that,
I’d like to hear a song.
Parts of “L’Via L’Viaquez” are
absolutely monstrous as well, specifically the loud, meaty,
boogie guitar sections where Cedric sings in Spanish. Those totally rule my ass. Problem is that the band alternates them like
five times with long, drawn-out salsa sections that are cool at first
(“Hey! Slow, sexy salsa music! Muy caliente!”), but after two or three
minutes are a bore, and the fourth time Omar decides to stop
the rocking and start the salsa, I’m about ready to personally kill him. “Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore”
appears to be one giant crescendo of atmospherics, which I would appreciate
greatly if the song were six or seven minutes long (it’s very effective at points), but which pisses me off at twelve, because who can really sit through slowly building headphone candy
atmospheric noise for eight or nine minutes just for a thirty second musical
orgasm? Editing, my friend. Editing.
Now, I know it’s weird to go on and
on about how an album needs to be edited and then rave about how its best track
is half an hour long, but that’s exactly what I’m gonna do, because “Cassandra
Gemini,” despite obviously being a little unnecessarily padded a-la Tales From Topographic Oceans in places, is somehow the only track here
that doesn’t have a point where I momentarily want to torture and kill Messrs.
Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala for having no ability whatsoever to focus and
edit their clearly prodigious talents for writing interesting, ass-kicking
progressive music. First off, the
transition from “Miranda” to this track is stunning, as the mushy atmospheric
nothingness that ends “Miranda” (yes, after the crescendo reaches its peak, the
song goes back to doing nothing for two or three more minutes) suddenly ends with a sudden *BOOM* that actually made me jump
out of my seat the first time I heard it (and STILL makes me do so, and I’ve
listened to this album like seven times…I never see it coming). The tune is for some reason divided into
eight separate tracks on the CD, but I’ve never figured out why (pay no
attention to the track listing you find anywhere: the first four songs are
tracks 1-4 and “Cassandra” takes up tracks 5-12), and I don’t really care why, because the first 10-15 minutes of it are probably the best music
the Mars Volta has yet composed. A
simple yet effective repetitive bass line goes on most of the time, and the
band just layers trumpets and horns and strings (this might sound horrendous in
description, like Lizard or something, but it’s HUGE and it’s awesome,
trust me) on top and Omar does all these nasty solo things with his
guitar. It actually sounds like the
best, most rocking moments on De-Loused, only BIGGER, and the band actually goes
like fifteen minutes without letting up!
Yeah, they get a little bogged down in go-nowhere “stuff” somewhere
around track 9 or 10 or something, but the ratio of ass-kicking greatness to
boring iffyness is much better here than on any of the other tracks. Then the end of the tune provides a
recurrence of the themes from the beginning, then a recurrence of the acoustic
intro to “Cygnus” to close the record out, like “Pigs on the Wing” or
something. It took the band forty-five
minutes to come up with a track I can unabashedly recommend (instead of a part of a track), but at least they did it.
Were this record made 30-35 years
ago, it would totally kick ass.
Why? Length. Limited to the 45-minutes an LP can hold,
this album would be fantastic.
Picture “The Widow” without its three-minute dick ending, a heavily-edited
“Cygnus,” “L’Via L’Viaquez” with one salsa interlude (a-la “South Side of the
Sky” and its middle piano part) instead of four of five, and a six-minute “Miranda” on side 1.
Then picture “Cassandra” with about 5-10 minutes in the middle chopped
off taking up side 2. How much ass would
that kick? Unless they decided to go the
double album route, make the first four tracks one LP, and add ten minutes to “Cassandra” and go all “Thick as a Brick” on it. That would just piss me off. These guys have so much talent. Yet they either cannot or are simply not willing to reign in their ridiculousness to a manageable, solid, structured
length. I feel bad giving a 7 to a
record with so many great moments and a half-hour song that
actually keeps me entertained the vast majority of the time it’s playing, but
these guys need to hire someone outside the band to edit their fucking songs
for them. It’s ridiculous. If this band ever gets even a modicum of focus to their music, they could be one of the best acts in the
world. But maybe they like sticking fifteen boring salsa breaks into the same song, I dunno. Fuckers.
Ben Pacyga
(fishes.inc@gmail.com) writes:
What struck me most about
that album in particular is that it is
unfocused, but in the way that Pink Floyd were irratic after Syd left.
While not a momument on its own I believe that this is a herald to
something greater. Its just a matter of the different elements
meshing. Somehow I can imagine that the bizarre half of the widow
will be more thoroughly mixed with the song writing. I remember
reading a guitar world interveiw in which either Cedric or Omar said
that they wanted the next At the Drive in record to be their "Piper at
the Gates of Dawn". Apparently in addition to covering "Take up
thy
Stethoscope and Walk", ideas from "Interstellar Overdrive"
trickled
down in the form of the tuneless interludes (e.g. the second half of
the widow). Over all I really dig this album. Miranda is one of
favorite songs ever.
Pedro Andino (pedroandino@msn.com) writes:
this album confused the hell
out of me! but at the same time it rocked! some say It was inaccsesible or
avant garde for the trendwhores and wiggers! omar is a great guitar player and
also the high pitched guy sounds like your enemy geddy lee and his balls got
chomped! cassandra gemini is like their supper's ready! fuck I cannot remember
a damn thing except one that skips tracks cause I liked it and loathed it a
bit! it was too much for me to take! I much perfer close to the edge than that
one but hey I say 50/50. these guys are the new yes. the operation mindcrime of
the shit driven, bloated reality show, bush era 00's.
Scab Dates (2005)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Cicatriz”
I would be surprised at how weak this live album is if I hadn’t seen the Mars Volta live a few months ago opening for System of a Down, a performance in which they blew mighty chunks and made the System fans behind me heckle them nonstop for the entire duration of their performance. See, the problem with the Mars Volta live is that all the problems we find with the Mars Volta studio (repetitiveness, lack of long-term memorability, inability to focus) are multiplied too many times to count. Case in point: this album is nearly 80 minutes long and contains, by my count, three songs, and possibly just two (I honestly haven’t figured it out). The only titles I can recognize in the track listing are “Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt” and “Cicatriz” (oh yeah, why release a live album from the De-Loused tour six months after releasing a completely separate album? Who the fuck came up with that idea?), with the remaining song names consisting of such confusing language as “Gust of Mutts” (essentially three minutes of cool guitar sound effects with a groove underneath), “Abrasions Mount the Timpani” (six minutes of warmup crowd noise…the first sound you hear anywhere on this album is a baby crying. And it’s REAL FUCKING LOUD), and “Haruspex” (five minutes of something I do not remember at all…and is in fact not confusing language in the least, but Latin! Ha-ha!). If you’re down with extended jamming and sound collages and don’t mind bands jerking off for an hour without playing an actual song, then maybe this album is for you. Personally, I like hearing songs (now completely disregard my love for live Led Zeppelin and their half-hour renditions of “Dazed and Confused”).
Oh, I suppose it’s not really all that bad. It’s certainly better then the show I saw them play (in which “Cassandra Gemini” was dragged out to like 45 almost unlistenable minutes, including like a 5-minute horn solo nobody wants to hear ever), which might be due to the fact that the band is playing exclusively De-Loused material, which was all eight or ten minutes long anyway. I really have no idea how to describe this album. The main parts of “Cerpin Taxt” and “Cicatriz” are both pretty kick-ass (if less kick-ass than the studio versions), and the “Gust of Mutts” part of “Cerpin Taxt” is certainly bad-ass, but, like I said above, so much of it takes the problems bubbling under the surface of the Mars Volta’s studio material and shoves them RIGHT IN YOUR FACE, until you are completely unable to take the Mars Volta objectively for what they are (one hell of a talented bunch of dudes who just happen to have no ability to control themselves whatsoever) and instead turn into Pitchfork. They kick ass and they rock and they sound really awesome when they feel like it, but then they just fuck around for ten minutes with sound effects or play the same go-nowhere guitar passage for five more (listing such excursions on this album as separate tracks! My how “Caviglia” sucks my ass!). Like, the passages that were annoying for a few minutes but eventually went away on their regular albums don’t go away here. “Cicatriz” is eight minutes long, and it fucking owns, man, but then there are four more “parts” that consist of nothing more than a bunch of shit. The first three are listenable, but then the fourth is twenty minutes long and consists of a bunch of edited crowd noise and backstage patter and people speaking randomly in Spanish. It’s the most needless thing here, and it’s the worst, and it’s the longest. Fuck.
I’m giving this record a 5 because the 30-40% of the time when the band decides to rip they totally do it. The rest of the time, however, can go fuck itself. This band has so much talent, but no direction, no focus, no ability to edit themselves down to a manageable size. If you could cut and paste the actual song sections of this and release it as an EP, that would get a very solid grade. But you can’t, so screw it.
Pedro Andino (pedroandino@msn.com) writes:
wrc assholes like you shall
not insult talented underdogs like the mars
Amputechture (2006)
Rating: 4
Best Song:
“Tetragrammaton”
And so begins the part of the story in which the Mars Volta finally answer the question “Will they ever successfully harness their considerable musical talent and power to create something compact and memorable?” with a resounding “Fuck no!” and commence pissing me off. And the thing is I actually like this album a lot more now than when I first heard it, at which point I was about ready to pull a Pitchfork and just a post a Youtube video of a chimp drinking its own urine in lieu of writing an actual review. And even though repeated listens have revealed to me isolated (and small, and usually repeated six times too many) sections of totally kick-ass progressive rock awesomeness, the level to which I’ve actually been able to digest and internalize this bloated, ridiculous, meandering, embarrassing mess of an album still has not risen above “moral rectitude of the Republican party,” and, not only considering the (let me say it again!) insanely high levels of pure musical talent this band has, but also considering that John “Red Hot Chili Peppers” Frusciante actually (supposedly; it’s not like I bought this) does the bulk of the guitar work on the record and he’s from a band I like, this makes me very, very sad.
It’s easy to sit here and say that the main problem with this album is that the songs are too long and structureless, but that’s like saying the problem with Michael Jackson’s face is that he’s had too much plastic surgery. No shit he has, and the only worthwhile discussion concerning his detachable Mr. Potato-Head mug is whether he’s gone “way too fucking far” or “way way too fucking far.” The majority of these songs actually start out semi-promisingly, and were this record, say, 15-20 minutes long it’d probably be pretty good, but, god bless ‘em, Omar and Cedric have somehow squeezed almost eighty minutes out of about three musical ideas and a bunch of meandering pothead headphone ass-trickery that makes Tales From Topographic Oceans seem concise by comparison. For instance, “Vicarious Atonement” could totally work as a slow, bubbling, atmospheric opener were it, say, a minute long. However, it goes on for seven and a half minutes!!!! And it does nothing!!!! Some spacey guitar lines and Cedric wailing about “I know I had the chance!” or whatever gibberish he felt like blathering on about at the moment. And the sudden transition to the energetic “Tetragrammaton?” That’s well-done! Great drum fills and ascending guitar lines and stuff, then a nice quiet section with some cleverly building dynamics, a few tolerable Cedric verses before “BAM!” Fantastic main riff! Tricky and proggy yet powerful, and cool organ blasts too! That was a pretty damn good three minutes! Let’s get another verse, maybe a bridge, do the main riff again, and we’re out! Let’s see how much longer this song has to go…WHAT???? SEVENTEEN GODDAMN MINUTES????????? And yes, the band tries a few different sections in there, but all of the sections different from what you hear in the first three minutes suck. The middle section where nothing happens but a bunch of retarded sound effects? Suck! The meandering slow section near the end? Suck! Every line Cedric sings the entire remainder of the song? SUCK!!!
Oh! Forgot to mention that. Cedric’s voice has been getting gradually
higher-pitched with every Mars Volta album to the point where he sounds
disturbingly like Geddy Lee a lot of the time on this one, and you should know
how I feel about that. But hell, it’s
not like I dislike all Rush I’ve been able to listen to (some of those
instrumental tracks are totally sweet!), and Cedric sounded pretty bad on Frances the Mute and I still slapped a 7
on that one, so it’s not like he’s the main issue here. It’s the utter ridiculousness of this band
and their insistence on becoming more and more easily-mocked and less and less
digestible with every album. You know
they actually make a four-minute song here sound interminably long? Considering the length of everything else,
how does that even happen? Perhaps it’s
because “Vermicide” is based on energy-deficient, mopey verse sections with
barely-there clarinet overdubs and borderline-annoying choruses in which
Cedric’s voice is at its most grating.
Or maybe it’s the horrible pothead section in the middle that goes
ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE before the token “horn-heavy” section that sounds like King
Crimson’s “Lizard” crossed with a random track of Frances the Mute (think about that for a second). Is that like their next step as a “prog”
band? To incorporate “horns?” Because they sound horrible! Sure, they’re energetic, and in that sense
they have “Lizard” and whatever stuff on
Again, what’s frustrating is that nearly every song has at least one moment where the band that spent a large amount of time kicking my ass on De-Loused in the Comatorium shows up. “Day of the Baphomets” is frequently pretty tasty indeed, with all those multiple guitar lines dancing around my head during the chorus, but it’s twelve minutes long and filled with all these other sections that DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! You know the first time I listened to this album, I checked “Day of the Baphomets” in a “fuck, how much more of this song is left” way after three minutes? With nine minutes left? And that I did the same with the eleven-minute “Meccamputechture?” And that the horrendous, go-nowhere, nine-minute closer “El Ciervo Vulnerado” got the same treatment after a grand total of one minute? Seriously! One goddamn minute. How is that even possible? And how is it possible that Cedric’s vocals are actually, on the whole, more comprehensible when he sings in Spanish? And I don’t even speak Spanish? And why are there two separate totally useless drum bash parts on this album? And why is there a seven-minute slow flamenco guitar plucking song? And why does it descend into distorted vocal, feedback hell that doesn’t fit at all at the end? Why? Fucking christ, this is an embarrassment.
But dude! There’s this totally rocking riff part in “Viscera Eyes” when Cedric is singing in Spanish and it kicks fucking ass! And therein lies the rub. As I said before, if you could somehow splice together the best 15-20 minutes of this album into something coherent, you’d have something pretty good! The band still knows how to rock and kick ass and write interesting progressive rock. It’s just that they only know how to do it in tiny doses now, but they’ve also decided every song they write has to be twelve minutes long, and these two facts are clearly not compatible. This album personifies every negative prog-rock cliché you care to mention and probably makes up a few new ones for good measure. It’s pretentious, long-winded, meandering, structureless, complicated for the sake of being complicated, and, quite often, fucking boring. This isn’t even “experimental.” It’s just a ripoff of standard seventies prog tropes, only twice as bloated and with shit for brains. If the Mars Volta started out as a flawed band with potential, now they’re just flawed, and they’ve squandered that potential by making the most ridiculous, purposely-“proggy” album they could make while giving no thought to anything else. Fuck this.
The Bedlam In Goliath (2008)
Rating: 4
Best Song: “Goliath”
This time I’m not gonna write a long, bitter review about how the Mars Volta have given in to their own self-indulgency and inability to edit and completely ruined what could have been a fucking great band in the process because I’ve been fully on the “Mars Volta suck” bandwagon for a while now and the most surprising thing these guys could do now would be to put out an album that doesn’t die under the weight of its own massively overdone prog clichés. The only good development from the Mars Volta camp I have to report is that this record is actually mostly devoid of the kind of go-nowhere, ass-slow, pothead earphone trickery that ruined large chunks of their last album. The flip side of this, unfortunately, is that the sound of the band has now become so supremely hectic and chaotic that I don’t know of anyone without ADD who could possibly enjoy this thing. It switches back and forth so many times between riffs and fills and what Cedric Bixler-Zavala apparently thinks are “melodies” that any impact the isolated passages of kick-ass music the band still sporadically shits out may have had is completely lost among the spastic spacefuck that is this entire goddamn album. Let it also be known that I really hate the band’s new drummer, Thomas Pridgen, who half the time seems to be trying to cram as many tricky, hyper-speed fills as possible into every second of the record as if he’s using it to audition for another band (perhaps one that’s able to make albums that consist of more than everyone masturbating into a microphone for 75 minutes). He totally destroys what may have been one of the best songs here (“Ilyena”) by shamelessly disregarding the rest of the band’s purpose (which sucks, because it’s one of the few songs where they actually seem to have one) and putting not one iota of effort into keeping the beat. In case you’ve forgotten, he’s the drummer. No.
The only time this album appears to make sense to me is during “Goliath,” which has a big metal riff and somewhat normal drumming, as well as some self-call-and-response vocals by Cedric that are a) somewhat melodic and b) within the auditory range of a human being. The rarity of all of these things is more than a little unfortunate. Despite the admitted kick-ass variety of two or three minute sections of a few tracks here and there (most of which is concentrated at the start of album, specifically the opening two tracks “Aberinkula” and “Metatron,” as well as “Wax Simulacra,” which was apparently released as a single…and no, I didn’t make any of those song titles up), this band just has no idea how to write a song anymore. And I say “anymore” because they used to! I really liked De-Loused, and Frances the Mute was pretty well-constructed too. This stuff, though, is often just putrid. How do they even tell any of it apart when they’re playing it live? It all sounds exactly the same! The prog clichés are still ridiculous. What’s with all the horns that sound like outtakes from King Crimson’s Lizard album? Is Omar aware of the fact that that album sucked? And why does Cedric deem it necessary to send his voice through every effects box he owns at least once? Just because you have this thing that makes you sound like a giant insect doesn’t mean you have to use it. Does he think this is cool? I find it hard to fathom that anyone other than teenage boys would find the vocal effects used throughout this album anything other than “retarded.”
This band sucks. I know when I started this page I actually liked them, and thus the intro paragraph up there is at least moderately complementary. But you can disregard that, because now the Mars Volta suck. I’m still not willing to dip below the “4” level because of the musicianship on display and the sporadic ass-kickery they’re still able to produce (though at this point, when they do, it almost sounds like it’s by accident), but make no mistake about it: the Mars Volta suck. I don’t like them, and if you do I recommend you listen to Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, etc. (but not E.L.P.!) to find out what progressive rock sounds like when its practitioners actually have focus, vision, and songwriting ability to go with their musical chops. Or hell, just go listen to De-Loused. That’ll do the trick, too. This one sure as hell won’t.
P.S.: I forgot to mention that this is apparently a concept album about a possessed Israeli Ouija board. I have nothing to add to that.
P.P.S.: For some reason the version I downloaded has a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Candy and a Currant Bun” (The B-side to the “Arnold Layne”) single tacked onto the end. If you thought this band sounded bad playing spastic prog-rock, they sound horrific covering a Syd Barrett song.
Chris Ray (chris.ray@hunterlink.net.au) writes:
Now I'm gonna admit right off the bat that I'm biased towards this band as they are one of my 3 favourite bands along with Radiohead and Tool (and the fact that you're the only guy that reviews all 3 on the WRC makes you worthy in my book, that and you're also a fellow drummer). So I've been using the George analogy where he says if you're a fan of the band add 1 or 2 points to the score, which works pretty well with your scores so far, as I'd give De-Loused a 10, Frances an 8 or 9 (and I do agree that Cassandra Gemini is the best thing they've done), Amputechture a 6 or 7 and I won't mention Scabdates much, just to say that there are many better bootlegs floating around compared to that album, and Bedlam an 8 or 9.
So I was very interested in what you were going to say about this album, judging on what you thought of the others I thought you might've given it a 6 or 7, so your 4 came as a surprise. I mean surely it's better than Amputechture? It might be as long as that album but it doesn't feel it due to the songs being shorter and more of them, and the overall sound being far more heavy and energetic, which I'm drawn to more than the sound of Amputechture. And I don't think Pridgen destroys Ileyna, as I think he keeps the groove while keeping it tricky at the same time. On other tracks though he can overplay a little, but I think it fits with what Omar is trying to do with the rest of the music, so I don't mind too much (and one of my favourite drummers is Zach Hill, so compared with him Pridgen is kindof restrained if you can believe that!). It is true that the music is hectic and chaotic and changes alot, but I don't see this as a bad thing, but I guess it comes down to if you like the general sound of the album or not, and I do. And no I don't have ADD, in fact I don't think many people that do would like The Mars Volta in the first place.