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September 7th, 2008
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Music from another planet

The Mars Volta weaves morbid fantasies, with a beat
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By James Scanlon
For The Prague Post
July 23rd, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Guided by a Ouija board, the band overcame studio mishaps to produce The Bedlam in Goliath, its best record yet.
The Mars Volta


When: Saturday, July 26, at 7
Where: Roxy
Tickets: 750 Kč, available through Ticketpro and at the venue
Critics often label them as post-progressive rock, but that doesn’t really do The Mars Volta justice. In fact, given the band’s open policy of experimenting with everything from hardcore punk and Latino jazz to dub and salsa, it’s a description that’s widely off the mark.
Formed around the nucleus of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (guitar) and Cedric Bixler-Zavala (vocals), the band emerged from the ashes of emo-punk enthusiasts At the Drive-In and their dub offshoot, De Facto. Like big, Afro-haired Californian psycho-geeks wielding their angular, abrasive guitars in the face of Armageddon, At the Drive-In was one of the most original bands to come out of America in a very long time. But just when they were teetering on the brink of massive success, Bixler-Zavala suddenly took it into his head to pull the plug in 2001. Fearing big-time success would lead to a shackling of their creative resources, he and Rodriguez-Lopez decided to take another route with The Mars Volta.
According to Bixler-Zavala, the name comes from a Federico Fellini book about his films in which the director uses the term to characterize “a changing of scene or turnaround. A new scene to him is called Volta.” As for Mars, “We’re just fascinated by science fiction,” Bixler-Zavala says.
The Mars Volta’s music was never designed for the casual listener, as most of the material is open to wild interpretation. You have to scratch deep beneath the surface before managing to grasp any sense of meaning — and even then, it’s doubtful.
Like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd before them, The Mars Volta have become masters of the concept album. Opening their account was the charmingly titled De-Loused In The Comatorium, which focused on the suicidal death of a Mexican artist and friend, Julio Venegas. By adding a cynical, sinister edge and changing the name of the protagonist to Cerpin Taxt, the album became a fantasy trip through Venegas’ final week, from the time he fell into a drug-induced coma to the moment he allegedly awoke and threw himself from the Mesa street overpass onto Interstate 10 in El Paso during rush hour. Charming stuff, indeed.
Probing the deepest thoughts of a troubled mind, De-Loused proved more than anything that it was possible to rock and be morbidly melancholic at the same time.
Between the release of De-Loused (2003) and their equally disturbing follow-up, Francis The Mute (2005), Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez were forced to question their own intake of hard drugs following the death of their talented sound manipulator, Jeremy Ward, from a heroin overdose. Drugs were suddenly passé as the band had to cancel its tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Still, they vowed to continue exploring more unusual subject matter.
Francis the Mute was a huge success. Centered around the rather odd theme of a diary found by Ward in a car he repossessed while employed as a repo man, it stands out for its heavy, hypnotic and cerebral songs like “Miranda, That Ghost Just Isn’t Funny Anymore” and “Plant a Nail in the Navel.”
Last year’s The Bedlam In Goliath really upped the ante, proving to be the band’s best, yet most troublesome, effort to date. It all began, as Bixler-Zavala reveals, “when Omar went off to Jerusalem and the Holy Land.” Rodriguez-Lopez found himself in a flea market, rummaging through stuffed animal candle-holders and various amulets, when he came across a Ouija board.
“Having the old habits that I do with drug use, it became my new drug,” Bixler-Zavala admits. “It became a private sort of drug that only Omar and I would play.” But meddling in the occult soon had its drawbacks. The engineer had a nervous breakdown and refused to hand over any recorded material. And the studio flooded twice, leading the mixer to claim that certain tracks were randomly disappearing. The Ouija board did have positive uses, though, providing more than enough lyrical fodder for what became The Bedlam In Goliath.
Although overwhelmingly self-indulgent, particularly when performed live with circuslike histrionics, cuts like “Wax Simulcra” and “Soothsayer” (the name they gave the board) should make for a lively set when The Mars Volta takes the stage at Roxy.

James Scanlon can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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