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Live Review
by Dr Progger
10-7-2003
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| The Mars Volta: ProgPunk trip to space |
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Live: The Mars Volta
Electric Ballroom, London
Wednesday, July 9, 2003
The Mars Volta: The Yardbirds overdosed on MC5
ROCK is back, it is official. And no, we ain’t talking just any kind of Heavy-ness, nu-, rap- or shock-metal, they are all fading fast unless you are U-14, male and believe than it is Satan’s music – go, make you sign! We are writing about Rock, probably its truest form, the one that had its roots, and still proudly displays them, in blues; we could call it Trad-Rock, if we were into coining hyphenated sub-genres. The power was unleashed on the recently released and brilliantly entitled album, ‘De-loused In The Comatorium’, but that was just a hint.
Well, after embryonic garage awakening of the NYC-retro wave with The Strokes and The Interpol last year and now Yeah Yeah Yeahs, we are getting into that rock domain that requires masterful playing that can only be presented via complex arrangements and more breaks in a song than a number of cuts on a punk disc. The long-disrespected category of Prog appears to be reactivated here but this is not just rehashing the greats – it is updating it, taking it a rung higher.
Lazy observers could simply view The Mars Volta as the Led Zeppelin disciples but that is a superficial impression. This band has such a wide and varied list of influences that at times jazz is high on its agenda, then a touch of Frank Zappa, the spirit of the ‘psychedelic year zero’ (1966) being revitalised without turning off the punk-energy… Add to it guitar-work Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix would jump to endorse and vocalist who hails from the Robert Plant’s performance school.
The nearest one-liner is – The Yardbirds on a way to transform into Led Zeppelin overdosing on MC5! Frighteningly epic! Monstrously engrossing! Try to imagine what would happen if Pink Floyd were to jam with Velvet Underground in their respective heydays and you might approximate this rich and delightful sonarium. The two core members, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (primary songwriter/axe-meister) and Cedric Bixler Zavala (vocal) hog the entire limelight with their impassionate, frantic performance and their gravity-defying Afros.
The two, in case you switched the music reality quite recently, are former members of At The Drive-In, a band that was touted as the ‘Future of music’ a few years ago but failed to deliver and collapsed under the weight of its media hype. Which is just because The Mars Volta is – the future of guitar rock that is a dig for youngsters who find Korn, The Deftones and Linkin Park to be on the passé side. What is the most encouraging is that these fans – allegedly of ever-shortening attention span – truly listen, enjoy and are getting off pieces that last from 5 to sci-fictitious 20 minutes!
Titles of Volta’s compositions are also on the outer-limit edge (although the album is a concept about fictionalised life and suicide of Julio Venegas in 1996): ‘Televators’ ‘Cicatriz Esp’, ‘Eriatarka’, ‘Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt’… Their excellent debut disc will be viewed, as one of the 2003’s defining moments and it is the cruellest fate that, just before its release, integral part of the line-up, Jeremy Ward, passed on. This ace CD is the best gravestone anyone could erect for both of the tragic characters…
The Mars Volta appear, assisted by the likes of AFI and The Warlocks (to name two at random), to have brought rock music where it hasn’t been since Kurt Cobain did the deed. And that was almost a decade ago! The Mars Volta, and ‘De-loused In The Comatorium’, rock deeply, full stop.
Dr Progger
10-7-2003
The Mars Volta album ‘De-loused In The Comatorium’ is available now on Island/Universal
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