Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
Unicorn Skeleton Mask

THE REVIEW

And then they ask you what you do for a living. You answer that you’re a musician and a composer. And then they don't really take you seriously, maybe you write albums every 7 years, they find it hard to believe you. And then you say your name is Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. And then they say you’re verbose, that you exaggerate. And they’re really right. You have to admit it. But you’re a musician and a composer. And so people think of names ranging from Zappa (no possible comparison) to Mike Patton (a comparison that should be handled with care). Then they listen to your music and the tendency towards repetition is a bit scary. The love for latinjazzmathematical progressions appears here and there a little too often, until you decide you no longer want to fall into the vicious circle of distortions that you have "created" yourself. And then you focus a little better on a different direction. Not in all your releases, for heaven's sake, one step at a time, but done well.

And so you write an industrial album, industrial in your own way, while waiting for the above comparisons to whither a bit and for Trent Reznor to come to mind (always too far out but just to give an idea). But let's not rush to conclusions, to risky connections, and to a series of other metaphysical troubles. Let’s try to understand the misdeed. Where the emphasis of this new work lies is where everything changes, as it already happened with the latest by the Mars Volta. The pieces straighten out, in a certain sense, the songs are songs, electronics shape the track, and there is a voice present and it’s precisely his, the guitar has a different purpose, it accompanies and weaves patterns that fit and don’t confuse, the arpeggiators rhythmically dance under melodies on the edge of electric/electronic ballads like in "Sea Is Rising" which unfolds in an open and poignant chorus, pop in its mutant and hallucinogenic accessibility. The rhythmic surgeries are entrusted to Deantoni Parks and Juan Alderete (the usual suspects) and manifest boldly in the opening "Storm Shadow", martial, industrial, melodic, and in the following "Happiness" which becomes a paranoid and hypnotic industrial chant akin to the maniacal "Maria Te Canta".

But we’re still not there. The maturity, now renewed in the electronic cocoon, achieved in that distant post At The Drive-In that drove me crazy, doesn’t allow another burst of dazzling clarity that would permit the birth of a new masterpiece. Sometimes you start well, sometimes you tend to continue in repetitive directions, this review is proof of that itself, two years ago I wrote about the same artist, an attempt at change, there’s no simplicity in the action, but when you have a disaster in your head it’s difficult even just to remain silent.