If Omar Rodriguez and Cedric Bixler have long term girlfriends, I’d be very surprised if the past 2 years have been an easy ride for them, given how many people have been sucking their cocks since the release of ‘Relationship of Command’ was released. However, it’s been a while now since the extended hiatus from At the Drive-In turned into a full-blown separation so one would think that the hype machine would have calmed down a little.
Well, you’d be wrong. After the relative success of Sparta, it was the turn of the afro-sporting prodigies to re-enter the arena. The Mars Volta were and indeed, still are that incarnation, and everyone from the NME to the Observer have been drooling over their avant-garde masterpiece, ‘De-loused in the Comatorium’ since.
Judging from the opening paragraph to this review, you’d think I was unlikely to be a fan of the Bixler/Rodriguez partnership. Well, you’d be very wrong. At The Drive-In hit the dizzy heights of musical excellence and scuttled away into the history books before they could put a foot wrong and I for one am ecstatic upon their return.
While ‘De-Loused…’ was released a fair few months ago, I have only just managed to gather my thoughts enough to review the album, as the close of the year slowly approaches. When I first purchased the record on a whim with my final ten pound note some time ago, I was unsure as to what to expect. The attention of the world’s media and the chug-chug of the hype machine had created a little ball of scepticism inside me that gradually grew and grew until I had to bite down hard on my instincts and find out for myself whether it was the album of the year or not, like many had been proclaiming.
So what did I find? Well, first of all, I found that my carpet made a nice little resting place for my jaw, that’s what I found. I found that, for once, I could actually believe the hype and I also found that I could barely remove the CD from my stereo for nigh on 3 days. Family members would regularly find me huddled in a corner, giggling with glee as the opening track, ‘Son Et Lumiere’, glided elegantly into the full on spazz-fest that is ‘Inertiatic ESP’, unleashing an unpredictable rock/metal/electronica hybrid on the world.
While a lot of the album tends to stray painfully close to ‘head-up-arse’ style jiggery pokery, the fact is that The Mars Volta have successfully managed to tame the savage beast and create a record that is psychotic yet beautiful, unpredictable yet wonderfully melodic and, most of all, full of innovative and exciting chunks of noise that do little to dispel the notion that the Bixler/Rodriguez partnership is nothing short of genius. Who would have thought that a prog-rock concept album based on the drift into comatose and, ultimately, suicide of a South American artist could actually be more than an hour-long yawn festival? On paper, the description is enough to send any non-Dream Theatre loving music fan screeching for the nearest exit, but in practice, the baffling concept is pulled off with style.
From the haunting highs of ‘Roulette Dares(The Haunt Of)’ to the jaunting lows of ‘Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt’, ‘De-Loused…’ takes you on an almost nauseating trip into the mind of two of today’s greatest musicians. The inclusion of Flea on the bass for this record was an absolute masterstroke and he creates a perfect rhythmic backbone that, hand in hand with the masterful drum work, carries the opening tribal beat of ‘Drunkship of Lanterns’ into a schizophrenic Atari Teenage Riot-esque finish before melting gracefully into the ambient beginnings of ‘Eriatarka’. While ‘De-Loused…’ is actually split into ten tracks (plus one bonus track tacked on the end), it is absolutely impossible to describe a whole song without giving a detailed breakdown of each section. There are no ‘fast’ songs, there are no ‘slow’ songs, there are no ‘electronic’ songs and there are no ‘punk’ songs. This is not a group of musicians writing different songs in different styles in order to exorcise their musical demons and attempt to cover all corners, this is a truly revolutionary and innovative collection of riffs, sounds and ideas.
While I know I said you can hardly break this down into ‘songs’, by far the most striking tracks on offer are ‘Televators’, ‘Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)’, and the recent single ‘Inertiatic ESP’. ‘Televators’ is a slow burning number that drifts in on a sea of insect like noise before settling into a bastardised Latin guitar sound with Cedric almost whispering his vocals at times and continually sends a shiver down the spine. ‘Roulette Dares’ was the track that caught me most by surprise. At first, it didn’t do much for me, but after repeated listens, the ‘spazz out-calm down-spazz out-calm down’ structure purrs like a finely tuned sports car, reaching dizzying highs with the wails of ‘Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delay’ (No, im not sure what it means either, but when it sounds this good, who gives a fuck?) and floats wistfully out on neo-jazz guitars and haunting moans. ‘Inertiatic ESP’, on the other hand, is an adrenaline-fuelled journey from start to finish. Most people who were atfirst unfamiliar with the Mars Volta will have stumbled across this track first, and my god is it a good introduction to the band. Sounding a little poppier and with more melody than the rest of the tracks, it still retains the bands archetypal brilliance and, while beign the obvious choice for a single, is far removed from the usual radio fare.
‘De-Loused In The Comatorium’ is the kind of record that appears in a blaze of glory every few years or so. While it has completely cut the music buying public down the middle, baffling many and causing hordes of people to write them off as pretentious show offs, the fact remains that this is something special. I defy anyone to listen to it continuously for a few hours without taking something away from the experience. For once, you can believe the hype my friends, just don’t expect a smooth ride.
Ross