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Rating: A missing chromosome in that complex, varied, and constantly changing organism called "The Mars Volta".
Chromosome in the sense of "information carrier".
This album aims to provide the listener (particularly the seasoned fan of the band, the true target audience for whom the album is dedicated) with a new perspective, a new angle through which they can see the work of the band led by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala in a different light. Released in 2005, "A Missing Chromosome" is positioned chronologically between "Frances The Mute" and "Amputechture"; two albums profoundly different yet with some subtle points of contact. Very faint, almost invisible, yet the group's imprint indelibly marks both these works. But evidently, there was a need for something more, a bonus that would make clearer and more evident the path that led the band to release such a varied and unique discography, there was a need for a guide to explain to the loyal fan how Omar & Co. were able to conceive such different albums. In this DNA helix, another chromosome was needed.
Chromosome understood as "starting point".
"A Missing Chromosome," precisely, unfolds in seven tracks, of which the first three had already been released on the EP "Tremulant," the true debut work of The Mars Volta, released by Lopez and Zavala after the dissolution of the legendary At The Drive-In. These tracks already show some of the distinctive features that would later appear more or less heavily in subsequent albums: frenetic rhythms, sharp vocalizations, experimentation, mixing of styles and musical genres often amalgamated in a single song. Certainly an impressive calling card, especially in light of the artistic journey then embarked upon by the band.
Chromosome in the sense of "revisionism".
The other four tracks are composed of two pieces released as B-sides of the singles of "Frances The Mute," an exclusive UK bonus track of "Deloused In The Comatorium," or even entirely discarded pieces from the aforementioned albums. High-quality material that rightly deserved to be shared with the wider audience: in these songs, the ambient incursions that would be characteristic of "Frances The Mute" make an appearance (the track that gives the album its name in this case is more than significant), along with the dreamlike atmospheres that permeate "Deloused In The Comatorium." There is therefore the desire on the part of the band members to complete that puzzle which is their discography, and to allow those who listen to understand fully the creative and compositional work behind these albums.
The function of "A Missing Chromosome" is therefore of completion, to fill those gaps that have been left throughout the band's career, an objective to be considered achieved. After listening to this excellent album, indeed, the other works of The Mars Volta will be perceived differently, as if after hearing this album a new point of view has been unlocked, as if a fundamental detail previously overlooked has been discovered.
A missing chromosome, indeed.
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 Cut That City (04:06)
neonecropopulace has no reflection
neocaeczaristic phallic ruins
just east of the river denial the techs are breathing
welcome to this neotokyo
gridlocks will warn the chromlech alarms
bouquet of cuticles
landscape tantrums
tramontane torching the tramontane
i've heard the mumbling of citadels shifting on this richter scale
the alleys will flow marble intercourse
roil the pantheon... of subterfuge
tramontane torching the tramontane
this marabout isn't untouchable
indentured by servitude
neoinfidels - let's plug them in
neopolygraphic, trip chords
centrocircuiphobia the fallacy
welcome to neotokyo
tore the wings off seraphin, fed them to the anglophiles
in this stag caberat the bark of buildings surged, through the whipping volt abode
go to the lexicon you sluggard, if you will.
02 Concertina (04:54)
in denial who will come clean all the ravenous debris
in disguise sideswiped by penance cerecloth sentencing
this scapegrace will pay my barking harangue... are you listening?
on the 14th you stole what hasn't grown old
in denial, file this under a bridge that he can't leave
will those shadows glare from that blank- rimmed stare in a vacancy hush
aunque me dejaste ahogando en el mar acuestate en la tierra, de la realidad de tu sueño
manos de recuerdo solamente a ti te odio yo ya me voy
in denial, who will clean up all this ravenous debris
in denial, file this under a bridge that he can't leave
and the storyville sawbones couldn't fill
the prescription to mend all the broken wills in the white lie wards - don't you pretend
tangled in thorns to walk unborn
and this debt will collect
[all the sickness that is there]
03 Eunuch Provocateur (08:47)
The Al-Sirat hides
behind a wardrobe of eunuchs
Seconds collide
till the padisha scandal
The cauldrons have eyes
by way of racket and vice
A 's bedpan
Filled with demimonde lice
Dethroned by the comatorium
De-loused in the comatorium
The-Al Sirat hides
Behind a wardrobe of eunuchs
Seconds collide
Till the padisha scandal
Tribunals installed
Now that the provoste has been de-frocked
The labefaction is venal
My how these tricks turn themselves
In the wake of the inquisition
Limbless answers inoculated
I've caught mono bobbing for barbed wire
These nasty sores of ataxia
will feel the sting of the opiate copulation
The Al-Sirat hides
behind a wardrobe of eunuchs
seconds collide
Till the padisha scandal
The Al-Sirat hides
behind a wardrobe of eunuchs
seconds collide
Till the padisha scandal
The Al-Sirat hides...
04 A Plague Upon Your Hissing (04:40)
Sawing at the pavement
Repented their past lives
Might not be the only payment left
To be left behind
A pair of the insults
It involves
Rays upon the entrails and the novel
A missing chromosome walks
And now we wait for the fate of the others
Mass call of this plague
Mass call of this plague
Mass call of this..
Fondling with pitchforks
In a cattle prodded sea
Signaling the sedatives
To emaciate their queen
A pair of the insults
It involves
Rays upon the entrails and on the novel
A missing chromosome walks
And now we wait for the fate of the others
Mass call of this plague
Mass call of this plague
Mass call of this..
No one's getting out
Of the fetal camps alive
The trenches have been flemming
To take theyre proper heights
(just follow.. they will swallow)
Might it be the town unscope
To know lantern jackal tula?
Let us nurse the vipers
And the presence of your sins
Just follow
They will swallow
A missing chromosome walks
And now we wait for the fate of the others
Mass call of this plague
Mass call of this plague
Mass call of this plague
Mass call of this..
05 Ambuletz (07:03)
Oh lord,
Oh lord, You've made it....
You wanna drag your vessel
You wanna hush your voices
You better drag your... you better hush your...
I'll remember that I'll need to carry on
I'll pretend you're not around, I'll forget you
Just like everyone else, I'll forget you
Is there anybody around, I'll forget you
Just like anyone
Just because, just because, just because
Do you come here ohhh
Shiver around, shiver around
Oh Lord, oh lord, you've made it....
You wanna drag your vessel
You wanna hush your voices
...hush your mouth
06 The Bible and the Breathalyzer (05:17)
Among the tattered dwelling of the new found home, in the furthest cramped corner sat the shell of a goat head strangled in copper wire, scraped of it's insides, unwashed behind the ears, fueling the crooked names spoken by leeches.
To a thinning cowlick's fat his crippled limp, dragging along the hump of the floor. Sobbing from the smacking mouth of the demagogue wells, making wisecracks, spilling from the corners with their pink flinches, second glancing their every move.
It ate pickled nose cartilage that fell from the ceilings, a porkskin drizzle unnerving the humans, while it read aloud from it's favorite books, in glossylalia slang and hierospecks truths, following a slow and patient wait, a mocking their hair as it was glued to their upper lip combover.
Under the wall, the ships smeared by faithfully talking the magnum fanatics and their bottles of scalp soup.
They cooked up a tardis smudge on their eyes, a lunar antidote that powdered underneath the oncoming pestilence of their idling fingers.
It wrote them a seance, penetrated their every dependant desire.
It hacked off the central headpiece to the collective.
It wrote them a message in the marrow of the knife, with the extension of Baphomet* transfusion.
Glued to the animals, perversions of their former selves, patiently biting their fingernails looking for a clue.
As soon as it failed to appear, the faithful fell under the spell of public execution.
It had been an eternity filled with useless ritual, and all for nothing, promising salvation, but only flags came swarming around for a better taste.
What was left were the scraps, dressed in animal skin, defiled servants holding their breath, fatherless culprits blaming their kin, waiting for an answer.
They thought a day would come, or a giraffe might choke in midair squeal, some sort of indication.
Only it was the hands of the followers that had left their markings in neatly packed dunes filled with the decapitated remains, found sealed in sand.
It only stained the conscious for a brief moment, then came disgust.
Realizing there was nothing to it, people began collapsing in collective states of drought.
Palm-size vents heating in the chest, cluttering the graph, a bladder full of remains.
Nothing became of them because nothing was the reason, an apathetic display dripping into vats of obesity.
The feud had been sucking teeth for some time now, but the only baggage that paraded about was the curtain epidermis unfolded in an inebriated suit.
The fit came suffocating, feathering the boa-constricted paleness, frostbitten, and shovel-faced.
It came before them in utter confidence, flares of pink owls in the nest of albino eyelids blinking out chemical obscurities to the blind.
It bloomed into a hemmorrhaged contraption that impopulated the disenchanted, one by one.
All the churches were converted into quarantine facilities, inside them grew bacterial stubble compacted by larvae, contracting and teething.
A newborn litter degradively sufficient, running from the horse collarbone, amongst the murmuring femurs wimpering in fractures.
"Are you the polaroid shot you thought you were?", it said with a coy smirk.
With the position now vacant, it waltzed right in and made itself at home.
Seduced by the empty nominations at the altar of broken ballot boxes, closer to that nothingness that everyone seemed to embrace.
As it pissed all over them, the sigh of relief steamed off the soaking depressants, an impending sleep was on it's way.
07 Frances the Mute (14:36)
"It's been thirteen seconds
Since you all last said
I've become the apparition
You predicted for my death
You said that flirting brings you
Closer to the end
You can bait into the water
But you'll never get the hint
And like a stain of bricks goes
Dancing by your head
Plucked from an icebox
Grafted on my skin
My coat has hid the marks
Mink hits the shovel fix
Near the sway of pendulums
Boar abrasions and a kiss
She said, "I'll never let them hurt you
I'll never let them in
What you took from me is mine
What is mine I'll never give"
Mascara glass in the molar weeds
Herash, a serpent infancy
His eye patch pussed a gap of sand
Into his shine a sedative
More and more the dirt collects
You'll never find her body now
Her closet festered in a secret air
Blonde underneath a blackened hair
He never knew the colony
Gestated in his bed
Mingle with the carnivores you've something both in common now
Till one day his wasted breath
Swollen throat and karma debt
Set foot inside a parlor,
To find her drunken by receipts
He held her by the ankles
Gutted at the nave,
Yes gutted and depraves
He tied a rope around her legs
And let her hang for seven days
This never happened, but I saw you leave,
And crawl into a bed of broken windows
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