Home > audiofiles

CD review: The Mars Volta
By Shannon Yoshida
syoshida@mscd.edu

The Mars Volta Amputechture (Universal, 2006)

There’s nothing like a slow beginning to a grand masterpiece.

The Mars Volta’s Amputechture sets off at a slow pace in its first track, “Vicarious Atonement.” The seven-minute serenade is a well-presented prelude, with crawling guitar riffs, soft piano solos and barely audible lyrics. Phrases such as “Don’t let these hands/ sharpen your eyes/ a rasp of tails,” show why The Mars Volta is known for dense songs with lyrics that don’t necessarily make any literal sense.

The transition into the second song, “Tetragrammaton,” isn’t even noticeable until the beat picks up. The song is mellow at first, but about a minute into the track, Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s lyrics are sung in high-pitched harmonies with intense background vocals.

By the time the fourth number rolls around, Jon Theodore increases the tension on the drums. The song’s edgy repeated line, “Humans as ornaments,” is followed by “Said this dirt/ is turning Christ to make repent his lust/ So I’ve heard that the puppet tugs its pull.”

The highlight in Amputechture is the fifth song, “Asilos Magdalena,” in which the band’s Spanish comes out. Zavala’s voice is brought to a murmur and the Volta’s trademark sound manipulation plays its biggest role.

Amputechture’s wrap-up is a much-needed rest, complete with fading electronic effects, soft singing and, like every other song on the album, a length of at least 10 minutes.

Every song has a deliberate intro and a calculated conclusion, but every one also has a quickly beating heart, with quirky guitar breakdowns and lots of sound effects. Drums and bass stay consistent throughout, unless interrupted for a musical tangent or an intense finale.

The album is an epic journey of poetic verses set to an eccentric soundtrack.