•
Rating:
A little over a year after the release of "Amputechture," The Mars Volta return...
I honestly had very little hope for this new effort of theirs, following their last two works ("Frances The Mute" and "Amputechture"), rich in creativity and interesting ideas, yet decidedly too inconclusive and without a clear direction; furthermore, if we add that "De-loused In The Comatorium" remains one of the most significant (and simply beautiful!) albums of the first decade of the new millennium, I think you can understand my lack of trust...
But those two geniuses Cedric Bixler Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez managed to surprise me instead! They present themselves in 2008 with a decidedly more compact and linear album, without putting aside their eclecticism and their eccentricity in composing music... and that's no small feat!
We start off with the pressing "Aberinkula" which introduces us to the heterogeneous world of The Mars Volta: immediately in the foreground (as always) we have Cedric's very high-pitched voice and Omar's crazy guitars. Absolutely commendable and genius is the instrumental part that goes from the middle of the song onwards, where intriguing guitar solos intertwine with dissonant lines of wind instruments to reach an energetic finale that throws us directly into the next "Metatron", which starts with what is instantly revealed as a very catchy and absolutely spot-on chorus; the rest of the track is everything you can expect from the Hispanic-Texan duo: breathless changes of tempo and atmosphere like few groups know how to do today.
The next "Ilyena" stands out for its Latin character and its pop-oriented leanings: a very interesting track. "Wax Simulacra" serves as a bridge to the excellent "Goliath", a song full of slowdowns and accelerations, certainly one of the best of the entire album.
"Torniquet Man" is a slow interlude that only introduces the central "Cavalettas", another powerful track in its progression. Worth noting is Thomas Pridgen's performance on the drums: both devastating and precise in the faster and heavier parts (the intro of "Ouroboros" to name just one...) and sweet and tribal in the slower ones. "Soothsayer" strikes with its oriental atmospheres and with its King Crimsonian echoes while "Coniugal Burns" is a worthy conclusion for the album.
And are there any flaws? I would say Cedric's voice, which for most of the album strikes and moves, but at some points tends to be a bit annoying due to the excessive use of vocal synthesizers which become tiring in the long run ("the finale of "Torniquet Man" above all).
Ultimately, an excellent album that brings The Mars Volta back to the glory of the first album, confirming them as among the few modern artists who at least strive to offer something new.
A happy return.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
04 Wax Simulacra (02:38)
Came back to doubt yourself but broke in two,
They find it punctual with idle tooth
I'll find something to shake by the roots.
I crawl along the ceilings in your room
The cold is spinning thread to answer you
I need something made of freewill.
Am I waiting now?
Does my waiting howl?
I bring an avalanche of Toltec bones,
Contaminated cravings if you choose to
Play something that aches for a spill.
Leave out the meat for that contact high
Inhale the vapors and let the hangman smile
For that something to shake by the roots.
Am I waiting now?
Does my waiting howl?
Bring me the tame
Witness germinates in the child
That word of mouth stutters,
Blink at the lonely dice.
Don't know...
05 Goliath (07:15)
That night I remember
What you slipped in my glass
We came rewinding when
I foamed at the mouth
While the lights winked at me
And now my shape is kept
The rain it can't hide
Wash the pain from this hex
Is it so permanent
Did she catch a left eye
When it blinks three times
Or once just to seal you in
In your drunken breath
Did it stain like us
In place of poison heat
Gotta rid this world of your intention
Swap the corpse in the casket
Give me that corpse please
The one that tore nightly
I really want it now
Fold the arms slowly
Don't want you to hold me
It fits just like a glove
Does he make you feel alright?
When I seep inside your truth
Through suspicious little coughs
You sank your nails inside a key
While the door you shut closed up
The black stockings you kept
Smell of wet cigarette
Torn of lust that you could not keep
I have slept inside your fault
To have you keep me here on this leash
For the rest of your pets
I will feed to the theft
As we consummate the vows of defeat
And when you pray for an end to this
I do believe this is eternity
Give me that corpse please
The one that tore nightly
I really want it now
Fold the arms slowly
Don't want you to hold me
It fits just like a glove
Your closet is bulging
White marrow withholding
Does it make you feel alright?
Never heard a man speak like this man before
Never heard a man speak like this man before
All the days of my life ever since I've been born
Never heard a man speak like this man before
Watch me now
Say it loud
Hold your heavy burden
In a pocket full of drink that I have drunk
Spit the remnants in your direction
This is the closest to any kingdom
That you will come
I'm starting to feel a miscarriage coming on
It's numbing a stump
Clearing in my throat
And i just can't lose grip of it
She fumigated my mental hygiene
I'm all out of pulse
But I know you can resuscitate me
Never heard a man speak like this man before
Never heard a man speak like this man before
All the days of my life ever since I've been born
Never heard a man speak like this man before
Watch me now
07 Cavalettas (09:32)
A salty ring of night fatigue
When I get the sweats
From you listening
Primordial cymatics
Giving birth into reverse
Serrated mare ephemera
Undo her mother's curse
So if you
Break me a mirror
Hang the broken pieces
Of a place
That isn't here
Don't hide that guilty smile
Condolences
Won't go away
The coins you bring
Left footprints
Blind thirst
And braille liquor
My bed is stained
With fractures
Year after vitiated year
Four corners
You are touching
They will liberate
My need
Bite marks
In the menagerie
With infidelic teeth
Is there something
Out there
Waiting to take hold
When the whore
Won't answer
Who is in control
And the names you planted
Drop the seed into a hole
If you force me often
I might jump off the board
And the names you planted
Drop the seed into a hole
If you force me often
I might jump off the board
I am a deaf con of angora goats
Warning you all who pass this mote
It's only a matter of folding
Time and space
Before I become your epidemic
Is this your first time at my conventicle
You better not talk
If you came here for semantics
It's only a matter of folding time and space
Before I become your epidemic
Don't ignore my presence
Hidden reads the scroll
By the time I asked her
The earth fell off the tongue
What once was laughter
Corrosive, I became
What once was laughter
Corrosive, I became
Where a scarlet
Bruise grows
Sprout the fault we own
I am a deaf con of angora goats
Warning you all who pass this mote
It's only a matter of folding
Time and space
Before I become your epidemic
Is this your first time at my conventicle
You better not talk
If you came here for semantics
It's only a matter of folding time and space
Before I become your epidemic
Don't hide
Your guilty fright
Condolences won't go away
You've got that guilty smile
That culminates in bedlam
Please don't hide
Your guilty fright
Condolences won't go away
You've got that guilty smile
That culminates in bedlam
Don't hide
Your guilty fright
Condolences won't go away
You've got that guilty smile
That culminates in bedlam
Don't hide
Your guilty fright
Condolences won't go away
You've got that guilty smile
That culminates in bedlam
Don't hide
Your guilty fright
Condolences won't go away
You've got that guilty smile
That culminates in bedlam
I am a deaf con of angora goats
Warning you all who pass this mote
It's only a matter of folding
Time and space
Before I become your epidemic
Is this your first time at this conventicle
You better not talk
If you came here for semantics
It's only a matter of folding time and space
Before I become your epidemic
08 Agadez (06:43)
I should have known
You'd always scratch that itch
When you asked for safe passage
On my shoulders where we slid
And just before you laid
Dead weight upon its shores
I stung you in the face
For that's the nature of my core
Because
I got distance, don't let it close
Gotta let me know
You just gotta let me know
Because
Forget which way is out now
Gotta let me know
You just gotta let me know
I'm nowhere near
This place you wear
It's unforgivable
It knows that I am visible
I'm broken mirrors
And useless prayer
This lock is healing me
You know you came so willingly
Waiting is a vessel
That will take me to
Love, it knows no order
When you taste the truth
Because
I'm trapped in this cement husk
Gotta let me go
You just gotta let me go
Because
I paid with my own touch now
I brought a little cut
There is blood for every month
In the way you used to
Call her wicked answers
Time is a plague
There's no time for this place
If you don't
If you don't let me go
Heaven's made a cesspool of us all
I'm nowhere near
This place you wear
It's unforgivable
It knows that I am visible
I'm broken mirrors
And useless prayer
This lock is healing me
I know you came so willingly
There burns a kiss
With serpent scales
There is no miracle
I lost your miracle
I'm nowhere near
This place you wear
It's unforgivable
It knows that I am visible
And I wrap myself around your buried question
Through the blisters of confinement
And I seek to drain this broken shelter
To refill the pigment case that I have left
Don't stay long
For teeth nurse the first wound
Coats revolve
Hope to gain
What if we find
What tongue ties Double-Windsor?
Invoke to no reply
Those that lie
Have froze at the border
No implies
Close the frame
What if we find
The sunlight draws a curtain?
Invoke to no reply
There's a place where this depth charge ignites
In this place where a soul has no purpose
I can't believe you when your ghost won't let me go
I am the moment you were always speaking of
Because there's...
No fence will hold the sentient
Culprit fall about it
Say where I can enter them
Culprit fell about it
One fell, the other taste won't lie
Make no doubt about it
How many blame?
How many cave into the pressure I apply?
How many blame?
How many cave into the pressure I apply?
(If you take this breath of mine)...
11 Soothsayer (09:07)
My love becomes a mange
dyeing autumn in it's leaves
when it broke me in the branch
where my antlers come to feed
and swam a hundred days
in the bosom of this filth
carry on this drought
as i tighten this belt
this deceit has no arms
bended will take what's yours
calling me she's calling me
this it may have come to falter
we have become these pleads
In a field of balding marble
where the medicine awaits
the hourglass pokes at
the ribs of my cage
at half rations im finished
at half rations the minutes
all that happens was given
coil and embrace
this deceit has no arms
bended will take what's yours
calling me she's calling me
this it may have come to falter
we have become these pleads
Loading comments slowly
Other reviews
By paloz
The Bedlam In Goliath truly finds the band’s unmistakable style; it’s THEIR style, now finally unmistakable.
It is much simpler to surrender to this orgasmic tour-de-force, steeped in psychedelia but also in good old hard rock.
By RabbitStew
Cedric’s voice reaches increasingly higher tones, and his lyrics are ever more cryptic and poetically elusive.
After the misstep of Amputechture, The Mars Volta seem to have found themselves again and the way to craft well-made albums.
