The Mars Volta

At the Drive-In members Cedric Bixler and Omar Rodriguez regroup with this experimental project, which combines the Emocore of their past with 1970s psychedelia and a conceptual subtext. Heavy. At times Mars Volta sound like Hendrix's "1983...A Merman I Should Turn To Be." At other times they sound as good as Trail of Dead.

You may remember cedric bixler and Omar Rodriguez as the guys with Afros from At the
Drive-In, the Texas quintet that gave a boost to emo punk in the late Nineties -- and then
broke up just as it was breaking into the mainstream. With the Mars Volta's full-length
debut, Bixler and Rodriguez have taken ATDI's awesomely heavy attack as the starting
point for adrenalized forays into art-house punk and acid-fried prog-rock psych... More >

The most unrepentantly prog band to break in years began when Puerto Rico-born guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Mexican American vocalist Cedric Bixler Zavala rejected At the Drive-In's post-hardcore strictures, with Rodriguez citing salsa as a crucial influence. But his guitar montunos aren't salsa any more than Jon Theodore's Haiti-inflected heavy-muscle drumming is vodun. Salsa requires a groove, which the old people know embodies the community to which each individual is subordinate--such as At the Drive-In's forward thrash, which subsumes the complex songforms and explosive guitar from which the Mars Volta audibly proceed. In the case of Rodriguez's phrases and noises, romantic individualism has its uses. But Bixler's highfalutin inanities--the imagined dreamlife of a suicidal artist, all clotted surrealism and Geddy Lee theatrics--need whatever subordination they can get. (Grade - C+)