The Mars Volta -Octahedron

Fri 10th Jul, 2009 in Music Reviews

The Mars Volta are the kind of band that – notwithstanding their forays into the netherworld and ability to create their own language at will – you could bring home to meet your parents. This is largely due to the fact that, despite the mind-blowing technical accomplishment and intricacies they compound into their releases, this band has an unfaltering work ethic.

Octahedron, Mars Volta’s fifth release since rising from the ashes of At The Drive-In at the turn of the millennium, does not match the sonic fury reached by earlier works. Instead, it veers off in another direction which, for this group at least, is far more interesting. – œMellowed’ is the wrong word, as is the phrase – œtoned down’. But one listen to opener Since We’ve Been Wrong and the very pretty Copernicus will prove that something has changed in their approach.

Having been named Prog-Rock band of the Year by Rolling Stone in 2008, it almost seems as if Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala have cast off the weight of expectation that they put on themselves all those years ago. There’s method in the madness, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Bixler-Zavala was always noted for having a vocal range similar to Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, capable of ascending great heights on cue and screaming like a eunuch out of hell. But short of some digressions between sections of previous 13-minute opuses, very few people have actually heard the guy properly sing. That’s the big strength of album number five; even when they indulge themselves in some odd-meter, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink madness, Cedric’s voice is front and centre and unaffected.

Also surprising is the way they’ve managed to turn mentally scrambling time signatures and guitar pyrotechnics into some semblance of a verse-chorus structure, as in Teflon. If you’re actually listening to the lyrics (all in English this time around) they’re still as twisted as ever, but this is one of the first times you can groove to this band without making like you’re having an epileptic fit. There’s still plenty of room for boundary-breaking, as seen on furious lead single Cotopaxi, but it’s the quieter, more harmony-filled moments that truly establish Octahedron as a bold step forward for a duo who are always miles in front anyway.

Octahedron is out now on Mercury through Universal Music.