Before I begin, I would like to thank my good friend, Paul Grigas for inspiring me to do this, based on a short write-up on the Mars Volta’s Amputechture, where he wrote down what he heard as he heard it. Normally, this method of reviewing would yield a disjointed and likely boring result, but when it comes to writing about the sounds on a Mars Volta record, hopefully I’ll wind with something a little more interesting.
My disposition on The Mars Volta is currently mixed. I still enjoy most of Deloused in the Comatorium and enough of Frances the Mute to consider me a fan, partly out of nostalgia and partly that I think the music on those two records is interesting and at times, even hooky. By the time Amputechture and Bedlam in Goliath came around, however, the band’s sheer preposterousness – the nonsense lyrics that try their darndest to be cryptic, Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s inhumanely high vocals and ridiculous hairdo, and just how similar so many of the songs began to sound – all caught up with me. Still, I find a certain charm among it all, that the whole act is so outrageous that it’s impossible for me not to like this band. I even wound up seeing them live a year and a half ago (the one thing about the concert I remember most was how no one in the audience was smiling). So, I would feel just slightly incomplete if I didn’t listen to a new record of theirs.
Octahedron seems, without listening to a single second of it, like a slight departure for the band. It is only the second Volta album that isn’t unified by some overarching theme about dead band members and Israeli Ouiji boards (the other being Amputechture), it’s the shortest album the band has released yet, clocking in at a mere fifty minutes in length, and it’s the second album of theirs to feature no songs over ten minutes in length (the other being The Bedlam in Goliath). Most of the songs still fall between five and eight and a half minutes in length, but there are only eight of them total. Also, many of the song titles are somewhat discernable! Looks like we’ve got songs on here about death, bad decisions, Satan, astronomers, non-stick kitchen spray and a best-selling young adult novel about vampires. Wowee!
So what does this mean? Have these guys gone pop? Are they abandoning the coqui frog solos? Will they still sing about ocular anatomy? We shall find out now!
Pushing play…
Track 1: Since We’ve Been Wrong
Silence. Complete silence. Now a single drone fading in 30 seconds into the album. 45 seconds. One minute. 1:15. 1:30. And at 1:37 we get finally get something! A bit of arty, proggy acoustic arpeggiation. And here’s Cedric, mentioning “eyelids” as the second line in the album. Knew he wouldn’t let me down! Now his vocals are double tracked. It’s very pretty, but at the same time, I don’t think he’s ever sounded more feminine than he does here. I guess it’s kinda Houses-of-the-Holy-Led-Zep influenced, and I can’t really tell if this is a good thing or not. Okay, five minutes in and I’m starting to seriously doubt the song’s single potential… oh there we go. Drums come in at 5:15. Still, they picked this as the single?! It’s so damn slow! Ah, well. The lyrics are pretty linear: “You will never ever know me”? Makes me miss the days of “transmark amoeba lanscraft.”
Track 2: Teflon
Alright, this is a bit more like the Volta I’ve grown used to. Pretty neat drumming actually… it’s a 4/4 rhythm but it sure doesn’t feel like it! “Stack the tires to the neck with a body inside.” Alright. Some pretty cool reverbed slide guitar work on here. Lyrics about shooting hostages in the Oval Office. Pretty cryptic, but still too linear for my Volta tastes. Well the song just ended and there’s still 30 seconds left. Color me surprised. I quite liked that song though.
Track 3: Halo of Nembutals
What the Christ is a Nembutal? It must be pretty morose cause this is a moody intro. Man, the way he says “Dee-vee-ate” is pretty funny. Eh, I’m not feeling this. Another kinda sluggish tempo on our hands. “Cables of ringworms have hung themselves.” “They sent in the necrophiliacs.” At least the lyrics are getting more absurd. And there’s a bizarre piano outro. Meh.
Track 4: With Twilight as My Guide
Here’s the one we’ve all been waiting for, the song about our generation’s Hamlet. Over one minute in though and the only vaguely vampiric lyric we’ve got so far is “By the longest tusk of corridors numb below the neck.” Where are the werewolves?! Forks, WA?! Vampire baseball?! Glitter?! Musically we just have more acoustic picking and moody atmospherics. Four and a half minutes in and we still don’t get a backbeat. Gah, what happened to the frenetic tempos of “Cygnus, Visimund Cygnus” or however the hell you spell it? Or “Eriatarka”? And furthermore, the only Twilight-y thing about this damn song is that I could see it fitting in nicely with one of those boring-ass scenes in the movie where Edward blankly stares at Bella and they discuss how much they want to die. Disappointment of the year.
Track 5: Cotopaxi
This song, at 3:39 is the fifth-shortest song in the Mars Volta discography and finally, we get some energy! Even if it does kinda sound like dumb funk-metal, at least the rhythms are broken-up enough to maintain a good amount of integrity. Whoah, where did this breakdown come from? Sounds almost Tull-ish. “That’s when I’ll magnify a hole in your abdomen.” Ho ho ho.
Track 6: Desperate Graves
Alright, this may be the single most straightforward vocal melody that the band has put together in its career (maybe discounting “The Widow,” although so far this is much more interesting than that track.) “Dressed in the slurs of bovine engines/To feast upon the carcass of your mother.” I dunno if they’ll be able to top that one on this album. This might also be the best song on the album; at the very least, it should have been the single, hands down.
Track 7: Copernicus
Another slow one. A minute and a half in and it’s got the same exact feel as “Since We’ve Been Wrong” and “With Twilight as my Guide.” Still, it just feels like it’s waiting to explode. I’m just gonna prepare myself and hold out for it. Okay, here comes another verse. Alright, verse two ended. Here we go… EXPLODE! … … Goddamnit, all we get is some light programmed percussion for the bridge. 4:30 in and now the programmed percussion has even gone away. I mean, to be fair, I guess it’s kinda pretty at best, but really, this slow, unenergetic balladry just isn’t cutting it, especially when it lasts for seven and a half minutes at a time. Don’t get me wrong, I love lengthy ballads. “Ambulance Blues,” “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” etc. But I don’t think I need to explain how the Mars Volta aren’t Neil Young or Bob Dylan, do I?
Track 8: Luciforms
Okay, here’s the final, and longest track, clocking in at 8:22. Let’s see how they bow out this time around. Alright, well, they’ve spent a minute of it letting nothing happen. Alright, over a minute and a half in, we finally get some phased vocals over a slow, but swinging beat. And two minutes in we get some pounding drums! Yes! The song is pretty bluesy, which is neat although not particularly exciting. Pleasant piano tones in the bridge. Bridge. Man, I’m writing about bridges in Mars Volta songs as if they’ve always stuck to standard song structures. A blistering guitar solo five minutes in, the only one I’ve really noticed on the entire album. I suppose that’s a good thing, which is nothing against Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s playing so much as it is against his prior artistic decisions. But aww hell, I can’t blame em for being a modern prog band, and the only one I can tolerate, never mind enjoy. And it looks like we’re ending with a weird piano solo outro and some weird noises. Actually, this ending reminds me of the last minute or so of “Starless” by King Crimson, except obviously not as good.
Okay, well I think 1,500 words on the Mars Volta is enough, and now you don’t even have to listen to the album if you don’t want to! Although hey, if you’re a fan, you’ll probably enjoy it, and if you’re not, it definitely won’t convert you. It’s a lot slower and more plodding than their other albums, but it’s also mercifully short, never dwelling the jam-band, masturbatory excess of plenty of their prior work. Okay, I’m done. Time to go secrete a monument with my hands.
No comments:
Post a Comment