Pages tagged “the mars volta”

The Mars Volta has confirmed a handful of spring tour dates in support of its new album The Bedlam in Goliath.

Goliath is the band’s fourth album since its inception in 2001 by former At the Drive-In bandmates Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala. The album was released Jan. 29, and entered the Billboard Top 200 last week at #3.

Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala have a reputation for being anything but conventional, and indeed, they have already completed an 11-date preview tour for the new album in January. The band also released the video game Goliath the Soothsayer Jan. 2 as a companion to the album.

The band will kick off its spring tour April 1 in Orlando, Fla. Confirmed shows are listed below, and more dates will be announced shortly.

April
1 - Orlando, Fla. @ House of Blues
4 - Myrtle Beach, S.C. @ House of Blues
5 - Atlanta, Ga. @ The Tabernacle
17 - St. Louis, Mo. @ The Pageant
18 - Columbus, Ohio @ Newport Music Hall
20 - Chicago, Ill. @ Aragon Ballroom
21 - St. Paul, Minn. @ Roy Wilkins Auditorium

Related links:
TheMarsVolta.com
The Mars Volta on MySpace
Paste: Mars Volta – the video game

Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.

Haunted Ouija boards, Byzantine chord changes, all sullied by the funk

Since the splitting of At the Drive-In’s emo-atom into the separate components of Sparta and The Mars Volta, the latter has proven the more radioactive and unstable element. Comprised primarily of guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and belter Cedric Bixler-Zavala, the band has been prolific in the 21st century, emitting four sprawling full-lengths, two EPs and a live album. But The Mars Volta is nothing if not maddening—a starburst of modern-rock effulgence buried under wankery and overindulgence.

While previous albums were riddled with questionable genre infatuations, tours with the Red Hot Chili Peppers have added a new bad habit: The Mars Volta now revels in the funk. The band bursts out of the gate on The Bedlam in Goliath with the fast and furious “Aberinkula,” but it’s not long before slap bass derails all momentum. The band locks back in, though, with an incandescent guitar solo at song’s end leading into “Metatron,” a dizzying rock whorl.

Overstuffed with glitches, vocal falsettos and field recordings of bazaars and mosque prayers; rubbery bass and processed horns, Bedlam has certain stretches that are exhilarating—with a furious lead from Rodriguez-Lopez, a soaring vocal line from Bixler-Zavala or a thunderous drum roll all collating into something exquisite. But even the highest highs soon crash and dissipate, wallowing once more in a proggy bog.

The Mars Volta are sure making good use of their freshly printed 2008 yearly planners, rattling off tour dates in backward chronological order. In addition to the smattering of international dates that will follow the release of The Bedlam in Goliath on Jan. 29, the band just added the top piece of its sandwich.

The U.S. dates will support Goliath the month before it is released. All this without mentioning the new Mars Volta video game, early in the new year. Overwhelmed by prog-rock news yet? Us too.

Sink your chompers into these U.S. dates:

January
9 - Burlington, Vt. @ Higher Ground
11 - New Haven, Conn. @ Toad's Place
12 - Providence, R.I. @ Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel
14 - New York, N.Y. @ Terminal 5
17 - Philadelphia, Pa. @ The Fillmore at the TLA
18 - Baltimore, Md. @ Rams Head Live
19 - Columbus, Ohio @ Newport Music Hall
21 - Toronto, Ont. @ Phoenix Concert Hall
23 - Detroit, Mich. @ St. Andrews Hall
25 - Kansas City, Mo. @ Beaumont Club
27 - Boulder, Colo. @ Fox Theatre

Related links:
MarsVolta.com
The Mars Volta on MySpace
Paste: The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

The Mars Volta have faced accusations of pretension before. And the band's latest announcement won't exactly silence those critics. Ever the explorers of strange new ground, TMV plans to release an accompanying video game to its latest opus, The Bedlam in Goliath, on Amazon.com's music page. The electronic adventure, entitled Goliath The Soothsayer, becomes available on Jan. 2.

Okay, so it sounds a bit wacky, but clearly there's a rational explanation for this odd promotional device. Isn't that right, Mars Volta press release?

"The Bedlam In Goliath chronicles The Mars Volta's time with the "Soothsayer" a/k/a the Ouija board owned by vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala, and its mutation from a source of amusement during the tour supporting the band's Amputechture album into a malevolent psycho-spiritual force that nearly tore the group apart, collectively and individually."

So, okay, it sounds completely irrational. But odds are that the band has tucked its tongue firmly in cheek with this latest news... we hope. If you dare to view a trailer for the game, click here. It looks kind of like... a creepy game of hide-and-seek? We're really not sure.

We can still confirm, however, the previously reported release date of The Bedlam in Goliath. It's out Jan. 29 on Universal.

In addition to the New Year's Eve gig we mentioned in that old news item, TMV also has a few tour dates scattered about its website:

December
31 - San Francisco, Calif. @ Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

February
19 - Oslo, Norway @ Sentrum
20 - Stockholm, Sweden @ Stockholm Cirkus
22 - Copenhagen, Denmark @ Vega

March
12 - Auckland, New Zealand @ St. James
14 - Brisbane, Australia @ Brisbane Convention Centre
15 - Sydney, Australia @ Hordern Pavilion
17 - Melbourne, Australia @ Festival Hall
19 - Adelaide, Australia @ Thebarton Theatre
21 - Perth, Australia @ Metro City
28 - Ventura, Calif. @ Ventura Theater
31 - Berkley, Calif. @ Berkley Community Theater

April
3 - Los Angeles, Calif. @ Orpheum Theater

Related links:
The Mars Volta on MySpace
Paste: The Mars Volta - Frances The Mute
YouTube: The Mars Volta - "The Widow"

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

It's hard to imagine a more polarizing act working today than The Mars Volta. For every critic who declared 2005's Frances the Mute "practically a compulsory purchase," there was another who was prepared to terminate his relationship with band masterminds Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. Then there are the fans, who range in devotion from cultish zealotry to urine-throwing hatred.

So get ready for the sparks to fly when The Mars Volta releases its new album, The Bedlam in Goliath, on Jan. 29. Considering that the title is probably the most lucid of TMV's career, there could yet be hope for a release that won't pit brother against brother in the indie music scene. John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers contributes his righteous axe to the proceedings.

Goliath's track list:

1. Aberinkula
2. Metatron
3. Ilyena
4. Wax Simulacra
5. Goliath
6. Tourniquet Man
7. Cavalettas
8. Agadez
9. Askepios
10. Ouroboros
11. Soothsayer
12. Conjugal Burns

Pray that "Conjugal Burns" isn't as painful as it sounds...

In TMV live news, the group announced on its MySpace blog a special New Year's Eve show at San Francisco's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. The band declares that costumes "are required," and promises "una serata con amici e sorprese presentata in un modo straordinario."

Courtesy of Babelfish, that Italian phrase approximately translates to: "one evening with friends and surprise introduced in an extraordinary way." Please let that mean an At The Drive-In reunion.

Tickets for the gig are on sale here.

Related links:
TheMarsVolta.com
Paste's take on Frances the Mute
YouTube: The Mars Volta - "Televators"

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

The Mars Volta is not always an easy band to digest. One moment its acid-jazz-fueled rock seems maddeningly incoherent and noisy—the next it’s crystal clear and almost anthemic. Often, seeing the band live only magnifies this dichotomy.

On this Thursday night in the ’burbs of Atlanta, even The Mars Volta’s most ardent fans likely had a difficult time following each twist and turn that guitarist/producer/braintrust Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala and the six additional musicians that round out this ensemble had to offer. I doubt the band members care much, though, because they seemed to be having a better time than most of the audience members—99.9 percent of whom appeared to be counting the seconds until headliner Red Hot Chili Peppers took over.

Anyone hoping for a concise, play-the-hits type of show certainly left the arena disappointed, but that’s not to say the band didn’t offer up some gems for those paying attention. After appearing on stage to the strains of Ennio Morricone’s theme from A Fistful of Dollars (a typical Volta entrance) the band opened the show with the unreleased “Rapid Fire Tollbooth,” and followed it up with a 30-minute jam, which incorporated segments from a track from Rodriguez-Lopez’s self-titled solo album (“Jacob Van Lennepkade”) as well as several Mars Volta tunes (“Cygnus…Vismund Cygnus” and “Drunkship Of Lanterns” among them). Then, after this dense chunk of music, the band immediately launched into “Viscera Eyes” followed by “Day Of The Baphomets,” both from Amputechture, the most recent Mars Volta full-length offering. With the allotted one-hour set time already expired, the band disappeared quicker than the shifts between movements in the half-hour jam, amidst a cloud of feedback a wave of electronic sound effects and smatterings of applause.

Although The Mars Volta was as musically unpredictable as ever, its intricate and densely layered sound is not tailored for so large a venue, and this show was a perfect example of this. More often than not, the complicated musical arrangements were lost in a still-half-full hall—the sound bouncing around more than a tennis ball in a clothes dryer and producing an equally displeasing cacophony.

Approximately 20 minutes later, headliner Red Hot Chili Peppers took the stage to a deafening roar from the now-packed crowd. Blazing through many expected songs (“By The Way,” “Can’t Stop,” “Californication,” “Scar Tissue,” “Dani California,”) the Peppers focused mostly on recent material and played just one song (“Me & My Friends”) older than Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

In direct contradiction to The Mars Volta’s selections, the Chili Peppers’ set was snappy and obviously well-rehearsed. Often the planned-out nature of such a big rock spectacle—and it certainly was big, complete with moving video screens and a huge backdrop that spanned half the length of the ceiling—sucks the energy out of a performance, but band members Anthony Kiedis, Flea, John Frusciante and Chad Smith managed to maintain the vigor of their funk/rock hybrid, and even pulled out a few moderate surprises (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” and the intro to “London Calling”).

Although no longer a groundbreaking act, for a ‘big’ rock show, one could certainly do worse than Red Hot Chili Peppers. And yet, despite the fact Frusciante and Flea are frequent Mars Volta contributors, the pairing just doesn’t quite work—unless Red Hot Chili Peppers want to start playing clubs instead of stadiums. Certainly any appearance by an act as innovative as The Mars Volta is welcomed, but the band would be much more effective in closer quarters.

If you’ve been fortunate enough to hear The Mars Volta’s full-length debut, De-Loused in the Comatorium, you won’t be surprised by Frances the Mute—which is to say you’ll expect an endless stream of surprises. Every few minutes, the band undergoes a stylistic metamorphosis, whips out a shiny new instrument or halts abruptly to make room for, say, ambient street noise. A nonstop 77-minute ride—beginning and ending on the same thematic device—Frances bursts at the jewel-case hinges with Comatorium’s trademarks: musical inventiveness and wildly emotive vocals.

Though the group apparently based Frances on a diary now-deceased band member Jeremy Michael Ward found in the backseat of a car while working as a repo man—and which bears uncanny parallels to Ward’s life— it’s hard to tell what Cedric Bixler-Zavala is singing about half the time; vocal affectations frequently render his singing more instrument than communication tool. It’s the bed of category-exploding music on which the lyrics rest where the magic happens. One moment the band is channeling Zeppelin with a driving, bombastic stomp, and the next it’s laying down a slow salsa groove. Saxophones, flutes and trumpets make special appearances amidst frantic rockers and acoustic ballads.

Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, formerly members of art-punk outfit At The Drive-In, founded Mars Volta a few years ago in order to create music crackling with unbridled imagination. They’ve clearly succeeded.