Even though this isn’t an official entry into our “Rigged” series, I thought it fit quite nicely so here ya go!

-KW

Speaking of supergroups that might actually be super…

Back in June, Mastodon’s Brent Hinds revealed that he was working on a new project with Ben Weinman (The Dillinger Escape Plan), Eric Avery (ex-Jane’s Addiction), and Thomas Pridgen (The Mars Volta) — which certainly sounds like a line-up worth getting all hot n’ bothered over. Of course, that’s four very successful dudes who all have their own stuff going on, and so, as Hinds put it, “it’s been hard to get together.”

But now it looks like there may be some progress being made! Writing on DEP’s official website over the weekend, Weinman dished the following info:

Click to read more…

The release date of T.R.A.M.’s debut album Lingua Franca via Sumerian Records has been delayed, but that hasn’t stopped the label from releasing 4 minutes of an unmastered version of the track “Endeavor,” picked up by our fellow T.R.A.M. enthusiasts at Metal Injection. The band, of course, features Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes of Animals as Leaders, Adrian Terrazas formerly of The Mars Volta and Eric Moore of Suicidal Tendencies. We’ve been excited about this band ever since we saw them at SXSW, and while the Metal Injection-filmed live footage of that show was super-stellar it’s great to finally hear a studio version of something.

And it sounds exactly like I hoped it would. You can tell there’s a basic structure to the song — Section A, Section B, Section A, etc — but that within each section there’s no set script, and a pre-determined band member is free to improvise within the given framework. T.R.A.M. isn’t really so much a metal band as they are a jazz band with distorted guitars and shredding, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong that; the metal world needs to be turned upside down and shaken once in a while, and #2 Tosin Abasi on our list of the Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists is the perfect guy to do it.

-VN

On Tuesday Kia and Adult Swim’s weird download wall will offer (for freeness) an unreleased Mastodon song from the fruitful Crack The Skye sessions. This is boner news cuz while Skye is rad, its mere seven tracks aren’t enough — no matter how lengthy and multi-staged. Right or wrong, I need no fewer than nine jams per LP even if that means the damn shit is two hours long. All perfect albums have about that many cycles of verse, hook, and junk. (And the reverse is true cuz I top out at about 12 tracks — no matter how brief. TMI.)

In this way, Skye resembles Frances The Mute by Masto-labelmates/-collaborators The Mars Volta, right? It too is ambitious, wild, woolly, just ka-blammo. But The Mars Volta counteracted Mute‘s endless noodling and low number of complete cycles with a B-side, “Frances The Mute,” that slides tightly into the lead track slot of the album. And bam! the album just got bigger and better and yes longer, but we already went over that. So tomorrow, Mastodon might do the very same favor for Crack The Skye via “Deathbound”. Go here to get it.

–ADF

Mastodon’s forthcoming album The Hunter is officially slated for release in 2011 and allegedly features songs titled “The Octopus Has No Friends,” “Stargasm,” and “Blasteroids.” Sure why not.

So how’s this for a new supergroup? Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds, The Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist Ben Weinman, The Mars Volta drummer Thomas Pridgen, and and  former Jane’s Addiction bassist Eric Avery are apparently joining forces to create a new project. And while I’m always a little bit suspicious of mega-all-star-team-ups like this — for every Murder Construct, it seems like there are ten The Damned Things — it’s hard not to get excited by that line-up.

Click to read more…

Last month Soundgarden announced the first set of dates for their forthcoming North American reunion tour; now they’ve released their full itinerary, and, in case my headline somehow failed to convey this, support acts, too.

Of course, cynical bastard that I am, my immediate concern is that if Chris Cornell’s voice is in poopy shape, these support acts could pretty much end up overshadowing what’s supposed to be one of the biggest reunions in years. Then again, Mastodon’s vocals don’t always sound so good live, either, so maybe it won’t matter. In any case, having this caliber of bands as the opening acts is a smart move on Soundgarden’s part — it could definitely bring in younger fans who are too young to remember SG from the their heyday, and it will definitely incentivize skeptical pricks like me into getting their ass to a tour stop.

Here’s the full tour schedule, including info on which bands are playing which sections of the tour, courtesy Metal Underground:

Click to read more…

I heard about, and then completely ignored, this photo album of Mastodon recording their new album. Why did I completely ignore it? Because I’ve seen bands record albums. It looks like dudes standing in a studio playing instruments. And unless you’re dealing with a band who haven’t recorded together in a very, very, very long time, well… that’s not too exciting. So these kinds of shots in and of themselves are usually not very cool.

Well, I’m an idiot. If I had looked, I might have seen this pic of Dave Grohl in the studio with the band:

Instead, I had to read about it on Heavy Blog is Heavy. D’oh!

ANYWAY, let us now analyze this photograph into, ahem, oblivion.

Click to read more…

In my post-festival coverage of SXSW I raved about the live debut of T.R.A.M. — the new group featuring Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes of Animals as Leaders, Adrian Terrazas ex-The Mars Volta and Eric Moore of the Suicidal Tendencies — and I even included some lo-fi but passable cell-phone footage of a couple of songs that I found on the Interhole. Leave it up the Metal Injection dudes to out-do my Interhole trawling with legit, three-camera footage and excellent audio of a song called… well, uh, I honestly have no idea what this song is called. And leave it up to Rob to out-do my description of the way the band’s music made me feel with this simple gem: “it massaged my ear-pussy.”

Now you, too, can get your ear-pussy massaged and eagerly anticipate the full-length album due in May on Sumerian along with us. Metal? Barely (especially this tune). Awesome? Absolutely. Watch:

Check out a highly entertaining Metal Injection interview with Abasi, Terrazas and guest interviewer-cum-drummer Eric Moore after the jump.
Click to read more…

Yep, you read that right — Sumerian has signed T.R.A.M., a new supergroup consisting of Animals as Leaders guitarists Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes, Suicidal Tendencies drummer Eric Moore, and Adrian Terrazas (who used to go by “Adrian Terrazas-González” but whatever), who played flute/sax/bass clarinet/percussions on three albums by The Mars Volta (Frances the Mute, Amputechture, and The Bedlam in Goliath). The band’s moniker, in case you haven’t put it together, is an amalgamation of the last initial of each musicians’ name (For the cheap seats: Terrazas, Reyes, Abasi, Moore).

Click to read more…

Musicians are strange creatures. Their work hours and habits are almost always odd, hygiene is often suspect, and sanity questionable.

If I had to point out one thing that ties all musicians together, it would be inspiration, often drawn from a simple but strong love for music. Inspiration comes from all varieties of thoughts and experiences though, and most will agree that it is a mystical and almost spiritual matter that is difficult to qualify. For me, personally, my inspiration is the most important thing I have in life because it guides all of my goals and efforts to blast through them. Although it may be oriented around music for whatever reason, the specifics of what I am inspired to do are not crystal clear. It is not instrument, genre, or socially based. It is just to create.

I have always been in awe of musicians that are able to look past the world’s conceptions of genre. For some bands, it is absolutely correct for them to do their thing 100% their way and use their tested process over and over, record after record. I don’t mean being stale, either… Development and growth between records is an assumed necessity for me to take a band seriously. Examples of bands that know their sound or process well and tend to stick to it (with great results) would include bands like Meshuggah, Megadeth, Behemoth, Muse, Deftones, and even more progressive bands like The Mars Volta, Opeth, and Dream Theater. But the musicians that REALLY get me thinking these days are ones who understand how to take a complete 180 degree turn: drop the world’s, or maybe just critics’, perception on its head, and use new influences from a completely different angle. It is almost as if they side-step into a bizarro dimension and are running two or more separate careers. Musicians that can accomplish this demonstrate a certain type of understanding and mental clarity that is all too rare. Here are some of my favorite examples:

Click to read more…

Last year Baroness played a truly stellar set that left me weak in the knees; this year, despite having had actual knee surgery back in April, I felt pretty damn sturdy after dem “stoner-metal-meets-Ford-truck-jingle” Georgians finished their consistent yet largely humdrum set a couple weeks ago.

As many of y’all have commented recently, this year’s Blue Record is somewhat of a step down from 2007′s mostly strong Red Album (which in itself was a dilution in certain ways from the band’s prior EPs First and Second), and as can be expected, the live set has slightly suffered as a result. [Axl strongly disagrees. - Ed.]

Thankfully my assessment has more to do with the waning quality of songs/songwriting on the new album record — the band’s execution of said songs was pretty impeccable, and the energy was ferocious. But is that enough to sustain a whole set? Well, not for me — about halfway through I started getting bored by the even-keeled-ness of the sound — but I also feel compelled to recognize that the majority of the crowd seemed to by-and-large eat up every moment.

So who’s right? Well, as we hopefully learned last week, music criticism is not about right and wrong (despite some folks’ insistence on deeming others *wrong* for expressing their opinions, pedantic as they may be). I will continue to wish Baroness the best, and I truly hope that the next offering blows all previous efforts away. But I’d be lying if I said I’m not somewhat skeptical. Oh well — they can’t possibly fuck up a winning streak nearly as much as these watered-down dudes.

ANYWAY — the real question is, what be’d my favorite live set of the year?

Click to read more…

Last week was a ginormous week for new metal releases, and with new ones from Killswitch and Suicide Silence this week promises to be the same. Topping last week’s crop was Dream Theater’s Black Clouds & Silver Linings which debuted at #6 on the Soundscan Charts. Wait a minute… Dream Theater debuted at #6?? Holy fuckity-fuck. Darkest Hour, The Mars Volta, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster and Goatwhore also had strong debuts. Click through for chart positions and sales numbers.

Click to read more…

[Update: Jim Ward tells Buzzgrinder a reunion isn't in the cards for him.]

Call it the latest in a long-line of inevitable reunions — At The Drive-In may be satiating my wish to get back together, reports ChartAttack.com:

Former At The Drive-In frontman and current Mars Volta singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala hinted that an ATDI reunion may be his next on his agenda in a recent interview with Drowned In Sound.

“We’ve been making amends with a lot of the members and giving some really good talks with them,” said Bixler-Zavala. “I wouldn’t mind it.”

Click to read more…

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

Click to read more…

I was pretty surprised when I heard that The Mars Volta, who have previously sold out Terminal 5 (a huge new-ish venue in Manhattan) and are scheduled to play the Hammerstein Ballroom (another enormous Manhattan venue), are also playing at the much more intimate Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, New Jersey on this tour.

Say what you will about the band — they are indeed quite a live experience to behold and have clearly captured the attention and imagination of a myriad of many serious music lovers in their 7 year run for good reason.

And so on September 18th, while Vince and Axl are giving each other h.j.s in the back row at the Opeth/High On Fire/Nachmystium extravaganza, me and the Gibbler will brave smelly NJ in the name of fiery PROG. A chance to see a band up close that usually only plays sold-out shows in gigantic venues doesn’t come along so often; I believe there are still tickets left, so don’t delay, and let’s rockit!!

See you in the stony non-pit…

[read my Sunday Spotlight on The Mars Volta and check out plenty of their wicked tunes]

-KW

The big Tuesday for politics may be next week, but today is the first important release date of the year for metal. Let’s take a look at what you can now easily pirate buy at your local record store on this fine day:

• Stonerider – Three Legs of Trouble (Trustkill) – Southern-fried rawk n’ roll, Crowes Mule & Roses, if you will.
• Bullet for My Valentine – Scream Aim Fire (Jive / SonyBMG) – One of the biggest releases so far this year, coming from Welsh second-gen metalcore quartet previously known as nu-metallers Jeff Killed John. (Read our review here.)
• The Mars Volta – The Bedlam in Goliath (Universal) – Fourth album from progiffied funk spazz freaks, ex-At the Drive In. (Read our detailed retrospective on the band.)
• Tiles – Fly Paper (InsideOut) – Progressive hard rockers from Detroit who have been round a while, and have toured with the likes of Dream Theater.
• Airbourne – Runnin’ Wild (Roadrunner) – Australian AC/DC-influenced AC/DC rock that sounds like AC/DC. Nuff said.
• Steve Stevens – Memory Crash (Magna Carta) – Solo shredfest from ex-Vince Neil and longtime Billy Idol axeslinger.
• Course of Nature – Damaged (Silent Majority) – Nickelcreedbenjaminseetherhinderback.
• Protest the Hero, Fortress (Vagrant) – Post-prog, shred-tastic, metal and hardcore-influenced amazingness. One of the most important records of 2008 so far.

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.

Click to read more…

So I loved, loved, loved The Mars Volta’s first album De-loused in the Comatorium when it came out. I then went to see the band that summer on a sweltering hot, 95 degree day at St. Andrew’s Hall in Detroit and the experience was nothing short of cathartic. The band was on fire, and with a few hundred sweaty, hot people absolutely loving the music it all felt like a big family.

Then came Frances The Mute. Except for a couple of songs… uh, what?  The album was too ambitious, full of extended, extended prog jams that went nowhere fast. I gave the band another shot, going to see them live at the much-bigger State Theater, and boy did that show suck. “Snooze factory” would be a colossal understatement.

I tried again with last year’s Amputechture. Yawn.

So apparently they have a new album coming out, The Bedlam in Goliath, due January 29, 2008. I’m not getting my hopes up, but the first single is pretty cool and the video, below, is somewhat clever. Maybe the album will be alright?

-VN

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