De-Loused in the comatorium

Much meaningless banter has been labelled onto this band already. It's been called progressive rock, art-house rock, whatever. Thankfully I approached it before I had heard anything about them. Listening to it as music, and nothing else, I found myself moved by the recipes they brought to my speakers. This could be described as punk-rock music that doesn't forget about the importance of making intricate and sumptuous musical patterns. Inertiatic Esp gets the album off to an emotional start. The fairly standard beat grooves along at a stop-start pace, but it's the vocals, and especially the chorus that really grab your attention, they reek of anguish and pain. The feeling of loss can be heard through the wailing voice and melodies. The same can be said of the next track, Roulette Dares, which sees lead singer Cedric Zavala's beautifully expressive voice wailing like the baby of Bjork and Anthony Kiedis of the Chilli Peppers.

It takes a while, as someone not at all from this often aggressive form of rock music, to get used to the constant interruptions of pretty guitar melodies by loud angry drums. To their credit, The Mars Volta do show some mercy and restraint, usually giving them a chance to show-off the other side to their musical weaponry, the ambient.

This ambience worms it's way very naturally into tracks like Drunkship of lanterns, and the 12-minute long Cicatriz, as well as the beautiful Eriatarka. Drunkship of Lanterns yet again displays the talent that sets this group, and this singer, apart from others. Cedric Zavala shifts notes like a computer programmed opera singer on nandrolone, and the beats get just as mental, putting electronic mad-men like aphex twin & squarepusher firmly back in their strange places. The music doesn't flow in the conventional sense, it comes across as more of a series of amazing feats and stunts at a local circus/freak show. Nothing remains, not the harshness, nor the soft georgeous melodies, the band seems eager not to stay in one place for more than a few minutes at a time, leaving the whole vibe of this LP reeking of creativity and soul.

Speaking of soul's I feel Santana's soul lurking around somewhere in this music, I get the feeling he would love this record, as abrasive as it can be, it quite simply has that quality that all good records have, it's not easy to listen to just once. There is something unexplainably addictive about truly creative music, a truly dynamic voice, that makes you want to keep listening until you have gotten used to it. Can they really do that? How does he sing like that? How do they make that sound? The chilled out techno grooves and straight-up vicious rock, mixed with the ambience, the keyboard genius, and perhaps most importantly, the beautiful light guitar melodies make this record such an engaging listen. It's not an easy pill to swallow, as the electro-hell of the closing track Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt proves graphically. But even within this typically dynamic closing track, there are enough elements of inventive bass, beautiful synths, and what sounds like totally spontaneous guitar solos, that you find yourself unable to feel indifferent towards it.

These 10 tracks will not take you around the world, or 'out of this universe', they will merely give you the soul of one man, the inner-workings and complexities of one human being living in the cruel city, he could be any one of us.

The official Mars Volta website (is nice).

Y.Misdaq aka Yoshi