MetalSucks

Today’s release finds Omar, Cedric, and Juan from The Mars Volta teaming up with Zach Hill and Jonathan Hischke from Hella; I haven’t heard the album yet, but I suspect most fans of TMV will appreciate……here’s the first YouTube ‘trailer’ for Cryptomnesia:

The Mars Volta will also release their 5th studio album, entitled Octahedron, in North America on June 23rd and the rest of the world the day before — get psyched!!

You can catch the prog-rock posse extraordinaire at Bonneroo in Tennessee on June 13th, San Fran’s Outside Lands Festival on August 29th, and at various dates in Europe in between — check out the band’s MySpace page for dates and locations.

And not that we really care about the Grammies (read my recent round-up send-up here), but after the jump I’m including the Volta’s acceptance speech from this year’s ceremony (when they beat out Judas Priest, Rob Zombie, Disturbed, and Motley Crue, who they referenced backstage).

-KW

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With Cedric singing on a few of the tracks (and appearances from other members of The Mars Volta, including recently-departed drummer Jon Theodore), Omar’s “solo” record Se Dice Bisonte, No Búfalo plays very much like a collection of MV outtakes (it even has a chilled-out version of a new MV track “Goliath”, which is here entitled “Rapid Fire Tollbooth” — I suspect this version came first, and served as a sketch for the MV rendition). But there’s a bit more headspace twinkled in between the actual tunes than usual.

This album, one of four full-lengths written and recorded by Rodriguez-Lopez whilst living in Amsterdam in November 2005, was conceived around the same time as The Bedlam In Goliath, and was inspired by the Jorge Hernandez Aldana film, El Búfalo de la Noche (as well as plenty of hallucinogens, I’m sure); which is where the title for Se Dice originates. Omar also composed a soundtrack to the film, which will feature contributions by The Mars Volta.

Calibration (Is Pushing Luck and Key Too Far) , the prolific afro’d Latino mastermind’s next album, due out one week from today, is meant to be quite electronica-heavy, and will be followed later this year by an album of remixes.

Dude keeps busy, that’s for sure!

-KW

OMAR RODRIGUEZ-LOPEZ – “Rapid Fire Tollbooth”

OMAR RODRIGUEZ-LOPEZ – “Boiling Death Request a Body to Rest Its Head On”

OMAR RODRIGUEZ-LOPEZ – “La Tirania de la Tradicion”

all from Se Dice Bisonte, No Búfalo (2007)

Visit Omar on MySpace (official)

Visit Omar on MySpace (unofficial)

Read my massive Sunday Spotlight on The Mars Volta

I mean, really — come on. There is no other truly progressive contemporary rock band unafraid to make such new sounds and defy all sense of traditional song structure that is this much in the public eye. Any which way you look at it, that’s pretty damn impressive. The band’s first full-length album, De-loused In The Comatorium, captured the intrigue of just about everyone you know, and for good reason: way back then (2003) it was fresh, something we had never heard before, like a latino Led Zeppelin from outer space. Fucking amazing.

And then, almost immediately, The Mars Volta evolved at ludicrous speed and became extreme-art spazz prog noisters on ther next record Frances the Mute, with the last song clocking in at just over 30 bloody minutes — goddamn. Understandably, many people were turned off by the ultra-prog/experimental nature of Frances, but several listens later, the album is undeniably amazing (at times) — I just don’t think that most people gave it enough shots. But there are rewards aplenty, and every song is densely layered and uniquely structured; a thinking man’s emotional/loud music project, appealing rock in so many ways.

Even the recording was its own controlled experiment — each of the players specific parts was tracked separately, forcing every member of the band to have faith in the collage-to-follow and complete song to emerge on the other side. A method occasionally employed in the past by Miles Davis, the results were slightly uneven, but the overall concepts came through quite clearly, and the album plays extremely solidly (never disjointed, as one might expect). A valiant sophomore effort that never once tried to emulate the tone or song structures from the first record but instantly surpassed it for anyone willing to really listen, that album at that point from this band is a testament to the ongoing artistry of The Mars Volta from the beginning until now — there is nothing to invariably compare them to; each record is its own concept and creation, proving just how important it is when experiencing an artist’s next project to release any previously preconceived notions and let the new work unfold itself to you.

Amputechture, their third full-length studio offering, ought best be approached in this way (5 of the 8 tracks are 9+ minutes long, all the way up to 16 at the lengthiest) — almost everyone I’ve talked to on the subject can’t stand the damn thing, but again I suspect that very few were willing to listen to it repeatedly enough to soak in the sopping thick songs. And I admit it was difficult for me as well at first, but I have come to realize that the band has evolved in an extremely natural and perfectly impressive way throughout their career, and Amputechture is currently my most listened-to of the three. Yes, it’s largely because I basically wore the shit out of De-loused for a couple years and am now simply happy to continue to get to know (and thereby appreciate) the more recent MV recordings. But that said — Amputechture is really incredible, and if you don’t think so, you truly need to twist a J and make nice with that album. The more I listen and let myself trust the tunes, the more I want to revisit the whole damn thing in one go instead of skipping around as I often do. Understandably hard to commit to the album as a whole, but no reason to write off its abundant strengths.

And so now we are upon the next Mars Volta album, The Bedlam In Goliath, due out on Tuesday. And what less should we expect at this point than something revolutionary? I for one can’t wait, and have full well faith that this shit is gonna explode, unevenly or not.

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