THE MARS VOLTA

It will be remembered that Texan "post-hardcore" band At the Drive-In unexpectedly split up just on the cusp of commercial success with their phenomenal Relationship of Command album in 2000 (still one of the best releases of the current millennium). The reason for their break-up was apparently due to an increasingly bitter conflict of artistic interests between the two factions that had developed within the band. Led by guitarist/vocalist Jim Ward the normal-looking members of At the Drive-In formed Sparta (apparently known as a Fugazi tribute band) whilst the two odd looking blokes - with nerdy glasses and Hendrix-sized afros - formed this band. Cedric Bixler Zavala's vocals are of course instantly distinctive and recognisable whereas guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez really steps into the limelight with this release because, as well as his superb guitar wizardry, he also composed almost single-handedly the entirety of the album. Flea of Red Hot Chilli Peppers fame (everyone's favourite gay rock band) helps out on bass and, apparently, the sound of the album and the band in general was shaped by keyboardist Jeremy Michael Ward (not to be confused with Jim Ward, of course) who tragically died of a smack overdose mere weeks after the completion of this album. Furthermore, this CD is apparently a concept album based around the life of another arty friend who committed suicide. I'm telling you that as second-hand information, I hasten to add, as the majority of the lyrics completely pass me by (although not helped by Bixler's often-bizarre vocal style). Indeed, this is quite simply the most pretentious album released since... well, probably since punk came along in '77. Look at those song titles - "Son et Lumiere", "Inertiatic ESP", "Roulette Dares (The Haunt of)", "Cicatriz ESP", and so on. "Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt" - what the HELL is that meant to mean?!? In fact, I could just name the entire tracklisting as, "This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed" aside, not ONE song title is intelligible, including those that don't use made up words. Obviously the majority of songs go on for seven minutes or so and feature different passages, different dynamics and furiously fast interplay between the various highly trained musicians. In fact, what's the point in trying to hide the obvious - this is a prog rock album. Not even nu-prog like Radiohead, it is just pure prog. Some of the instrumental passages on the likes of "Drunkship of Lanterns" and "Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt" summon the ghosts of Steve Howe and Chris Squire and suddenly you are almost fooled into thinking that Yes were cool all along. In short, those pretentious snobs Bixler and Rodriguez can talk all the bullshit they want - they've made an album that is almost solely progressive rock. But what prog rock! Indeed, this is an album that puts most of the "classics" of the genre to shame. The bloated windbags like ELP simply have nothing on these lads. Because, of course, they have barely sacrificed the energy of At the Drive-In for their newly found artistic ambitions and so most of these songs remain a controlled, intriguing blast of incendiary rock'n'roll. I wouldn't like to see where they go in the future but for the moment they've succeeded where the previous proggers failed simply by not forgetting the brute power of good ol' rock'n'roll. In fact, you could actually imagine this as the follow-up to Relationship of Command as, mostly down to Bixler presumably, they actually still sound a little like their previous band. Only one song fails to feature the biting vitriol of the guitar/vocal attack that so benefited Relationship of Command and it is actually a surprisingly good acoustic ballad, "Televators". It is also the only song that I can actually fit in with the general concept as it obviously narrates the protagonist throwing himself to his death from a hospital window. The two least pretentious numbers, and therefore those most like At the Drive-In, are the chanted "This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed" and the album opener "Inertiatic ESP" (although its intro is somewhat oddly listed as a separate track - "Son et Lumiere"). Anyhow, the latter is an excellent intense rocker whilst the former, along with the similarly abrasive "Drunkship of Lanterns", is the only dip in quality over the whole hour-long experience. The centre-piece is the twelve minute "Cicatriz ESP" which, of course, breaks down in the middle for a meandering instrumental but the band are so tight and so proficient that they of course succeed in their aims. The actual song part of the track is even more impressive and surely ranks alongside the likes of "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" or "Roundabout" as a prog classic. "Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)" is another stand-out track, being one of the most engaging and melodic of the rockers, whilst "Eriatarka" and the closing "Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt" also have their moments. The UK edition has a seven minute bonus track called "Ambuletz" which consists exclusively of panting noises and is one of the worst "songs" I've ever heard. Quite why it is a "bonus" is beyond me. Still, I'm not counting it as part of the album so we are left with a startlingly ambitious and brilliantly consistent release. Like most albums of the genre it needs A LOT of time to grow on you but, if it is your kind of thing, the rewards are obviously worth it. Indeed, if there are any proggers reading this that bemoan the state of modern music then you really ought to get your geeky mits on a copy of this album. Who would have thought, twenty five years after it looked dead and buried, prog rock would produce one more classic album of the genre? Lucky for the Mars Volta that I quite like Yes.

I said it in the above review but it is a point that bears repeating - it is genuinely surprising that some of the best music being produced in the 21st century is unashamedly and overwhelmingly indebted to progressive rock. Indeed, it is not even a case of the Mars Volta nodding to past bands with due deference (as bands like Franz Ferdinand or the Strokes do). In fact, no new genre needs to be invented to classify their debut album and, even more obviously, their second. This is a progressive rock album and the Mars Volta are a prog rock band. I even toyed with the idea of moving this page to the 'Progressive Rock' section. It is not that they are recreating the genre, they are simply in it, along with ELP, Genesis, Yes, and their much-reviled friends and colleagues. What is just as surprising, though, is that not only are the Mars Volta a true prog band they are also, debatedly of course, the best. They may have only released two albums but both easily match the highlights the genre produced thirty years ago and, to some degree, actually transcend them. It would be churlish and rather beside the point to say Mars Volta are cleverer but they are certainly just as pompous and pretentious. After writing the last album around a story about one of their psychotic arty friends, for their second they chose to convert to music an incomprehensible tale written by ex-member (and indeed ex-human being) Jeremy Michael Ward who overdosed after completing the last album. One suspects going down the pub for a few pints with these lads would not exactly be a barrel of laughs. If anything, they are more infuriating than the English proggers, given, as well as dividing songs up into parts, they also put the titles in Latin and sing half the lyrics in Spanish. The CD is also divided up inexplicably with the first four songs being the first four tracks and the fifth song being divided up into 8 tracks, despite the fact it only has five 'movements' to it. Fuckers, the lot of them. It is just as well, then, that the actual music on this album rocks like a motherfucker. Omar Rodriguez had already shown himself to be a guitar wizard on the last album but here he takes it to the next level with astonishing bursts of guitar pyrotechnics. The solos tend to be intense rather than long but this album does get bogged down in meandering passages too often for it to reach the highest level of accoladia. It is, of course, inevitable (one suspects they did not even entertain the idea of releasing a 45 minute album) and it is the only real blot on their copybook and obvious evidence of their pomposity and self-indulgence marring the quality of the aesthetic exercise. The Chilli Pepper boys are still around but do not form part of the actual band this time, with Omar and Cedric relying on their touring band for most of the support. The bass still summons the ghost of Chris Squire with its lightening runs and the band usually combine to produce an overpowering whole. Strings and brass embellishments even find their way into the fray, with astonishing effect on the mammoth thirty minute closer "Cassandra Geminni". It would be difficult to accuse any song that monstrously long of losing its focus but it does work better as some kind of side-long suite with each section featuring an astonishingly impressive rock song. The strings help it to really swoop and soar in the middle with Cedric's vocals following Omar's lead, although there is a very long meandering section before it finally reaches its stunning climax. The other four numbers are more bite-size (relatively speaking, of course, as ten-minute songs are hardly deemed 'short' on a Ramones album) with the opener, "Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus", exploding through the speakers and representing an expansive track that still manages to be concise overall. "The Widow" was the single and is a robust power ballad that is a brief respite of comparative normality before the album launches into its poppiest hook, on "L'Via L'Viaquez", which is ludicrously sung in Spanish as if to taunt the listener with a glimmer of accessibility. If one is to talk comparisons, though, its relation to Santana is simply unavoidable. Everything else, though, calls to mind a genre that was supposed to have said its last goodbyes decades ago in a swamp of side long synthesiser solos. It is one of the most bizarre and unexpected paradoxes in music history that one of the best bands within the genre, and certainly one of the most interesting in the contemporary scene, should emerge twenty years on. This is what prog rock would have sounded like if bands like Genesis had balls.

In December 2005 I drove all the way over to Manchester to see the Mars Volta in concert. Upon arriving in the perennially rain-sodden 'Capital of the North' I was greeted by the news the Mars Volta had cancelled their gig due to 'illness'. It was a very frustrating experience. But perhaps not as frustrating as actually seeing the Mars Volta play live. I, of course, have no comparison to make with the contents of this live album but from the very get-go there is a lot awry with this release. Firstly, there is the fact it was released at all. The Mars Volta only have two albums behind them and when this was recorded they only had one. Therefore, despite coming out a good six months after Frances the Mute, almost certainly a step above their debut, the source performances date from before it came out and therefore display only material from De-Loused in the Comatorium. Given "Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus", "The Widow", and "Cassandra Gemini" pretty much constitute their best material it is all rather frustrating to be have been denied the chance to hear them in a live interpretation. Secondly, there is the fact that despite clocking in at over 70 minutes (which it proudly proclaims on the cover) it only appears to contain two songs - "Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt" and "Cicatriz". There are twelve tracks on the CD but three make up the former, five the latter, and the rest are typically nonsensical words which seem to denote various passages of noise-making. Now I'm not for one minute expecting the equivalent of the Ramones' It's Alive with the band rattling through twenty two-minute tracks preceded by a yelped '1-2-3-4' but I can't help but think if they'd cut the crap they could have included more proper songs with significantly better results. Obviously, the band are prog rock enthusiasts and therefore procrastinating and meandering are not so much self-indulgent asides but the whole bloody point of the project. I think, on balance, it works pretty well on "Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt", which is the first 'real' song to appear after an introductory wall of sound effects entitled "Abrasions Mount the Timpani" (why, of course they do!). It begins in a faithful form before breaking down into a variety of sections, some resembling real life songs, some just cool guitar noise, the latter a track entitled "Gust of Mutts" (couldn't have put it better myself!). If you don't like the Mars Volta you're obviously going to sneer in disgust but if you don't like the Mars Volta it is pretty stone-cold obvious that you shouldn't be listening to a live album by them in the first place. Overall, I think it is pretty cool and can see that if they filled a whole set with such shenanigans it might actually exceed the quality of their studio albums. They're at heart a musos band, having shaken off the oh-so-tiresome limitations of writing normal songs when they disbanded At the Drive-In, and when they're on form they churn out some pretty nifty, technically flawless, rock grooves. Indeed, on that note, it seems rather hypocritical (not that it isn't sadly inevitable) that they can get ridiculed by the same hipster critics who can't get enough of sucking off CAN. Hey, CAN probably are better than the Mars Volta but are you seriously telling me there's any real difference in the way the two bands make music? Anyhow, a whole album of their best songs interspersed with cool guitar tricks and excerpts from other songs would make for a decidedly impressive addition to their catalogue. As it is, after "Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt" the whole set seems to disappear into a confused, meandering mess. Now and again there will be a burst of something that sounds impressive but soon enough it will disintegrate into bleeping keyboards and Bixler's incomprehensible wailing. Eventually, a recognisable song emerges from the mess - "Cicatriz", the centre-piece from De-Loused - and the remaining half-hour of the album is devoted to hearing Cedric, Omar, and co. dick around with it. All is more or less sound for Parts I to III but the closing Part IV is twenty minutes long and, as far as I can tell, consists solely of sound effects, including the crying baby that opens the album. I gather Omar Rodriguez-Lopez added some of the additional sound effects in the studio and therefore this is not a completely faithful document of the live experience. One would certainly hope not, anyway. There are times when the Mars Volta do show the best they are capable of with some scintillating musicianship. Unfortunately, they are also insistent on showing us the worst of what they are capable of, with self-indulgent meandering passages that lead us nowhere and can take an awful long time to do so. I hope one day the band will release an album that showcases only their immense talent. Unfortunately, it ain't this, which is conspicuously the wrong release at the wrong time.

If you have any interest in actually finding out the quality of this album there is no real reason to read this review above any other one. The rating may change (say, from 2/10 up to about 6/10) but every single writer will have said the same thing. Critics have been divided by the Mars Volta's previous two albums with myself in particular willing to accept the quite brazen self-indulgence because of the dazzling heights their music sometimes reaches. Frances the Mute was obviously about twenty minutes too long but I could not bring myself to criticise the monstrous thirty minute "Cassandra Gemini" because when it kicked off it was perhaps the most astonishingly brilliant example of virtuoso rock music available in the contemporary scene. Unfortunately, all the great bits were unnecessarily spaced out by the pointless and fundamentally dull noodling interludes. Thirty-five years on and it seems some people still haven't learnt the lesson first demanded by King Crimson's aesthetically retarded "Moonchild". At the time of my (admittedly generous) review of Frances the Mute I hoped Cedric, Omar, and co. could concentrate on the great bits and realise the necessity of cutting out the crap. Unfortunately, on their third studio album, they've done the exact opposite. Everthing that was bad about Frances the Mute is multiplied one hundred-fold and everything that was great has been diminished, shrunk into fleeting passages of volcanic hard rock. Over almost 80 minutes of meandering, meaningless crap a burst of something truly great will erupt from the speakers only for it to disappear almost immediately, leaving one to wonder whether one really heard it at all. There are individual songs but it is all an unmitigated mess. Instead, one would be better talking about elements. There is a bit somewhere in the second track when Omar lets rip with an explosive acidic guitar solo. There is some kind of recurring theme played out on a trumpet which I kinda like because it sounds like the theme from 'The Long Good Friday' (thereby bringing to mind its brilliant final scene). There is the intro and early verses to "Viscera Eyes" which features an excellent, grinding guitar riff which bolsters Cedric's Spanish wailing. And that's about it. Ipods have been cruel to albums like this. Not only do they require one to exclude them from the Shuffle function but they also by design show not just how much of the track has been played but how much is remaining. It comes as a nasty shock to look at the screen and see you've still got 14+ minutes left of "Tetragrammaton" and "Meccampechture". That said, cowardly though it may be, I would not say this album was utterly awful, without any redeeming features. Musically, they are still a great band (with John Frusciante's presence particularly welcome) so there will always be parts of it that are worth listening to. The fact is, though, it is not just that it is frustrating - it is that it is frustrating to the point where it simply isn't worth trying anymore. I think nearly everyone would admit they are capable of producing a great album (after all, they've got Relationship of Command under their belts - albeit seeming like from a different age now). But given it is just so stone cold obvious where they are going wrong and they just still stubbornly refuse to recognise it sooner or later everyone is going to drift away. When someone knows they're wrong but refuses to admit it there is only so long one can be bothered to argue with them. Life is too short to waste on people like them. The sad thing is no-one really benefits from it.

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Email me at: jackfeeny@yahoo.co.uk