Interviste e articoli, su Amputechture

THE MARS VOLTA: CANCIONES DE EXCOMUNION (EL OSCURO ME MANTIENE)

by Francisco Zamudio

FZ: Amputechture reminds me to an amputation, a mutilation, to cut cut something or someone, What is the real meaning?
OMAR:For us it's simple, we like how it sounds. It's a word invented by Jeremy Michael Ward, a good friend of us who was in the band. That word have been with us for a long time, and we wanted to use it for something very important. For us, this third record is very important and... i don't know exactly what does it mean, but the sound of the word makes us feel good.

FZ:So, the real meaning Michael took it to the grave...
OMAR: Yes, exactly

FZ:Amputechture it's an album marked by strong religious references. Is that a topic that make you discuss frequently?
OMAR: Yes, although if you look the records we have done, also there are another topics, like the medical one. The medical topics we use them so much, like death. And it's because they are "fat" topics in our lives, because we learned that way. But you have to remember it's a fiction story, you know, of a person living a lot of things in its life.

FZ:If we are before a fiction story, Who is the character, and which context is it ubicated?
OMAR: For this record, the character is more abstract than we have done before. We discussed a lot of topics instead of just one, and with them we did a story kind of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, where the topics are different but they have something that make them the same. I think this story is like that, a little mora abstract, with things we have been listening in the last year on touring. I remember we were touring in Europe when we heard the story of a woman who died burned, man, really. Well, she didn't die burned, they put her in a stick with a thing in her mouth, and they let her die because they thought she was a witch. And that happened in 2005. It's unbelievable that we are still with those stuffs about killing in the name of God... But i'm telling you, the record it's more about differents stories that happened, mixed in a very big dream.

FZ: Once you said you make music in similar terms of making a movie, what's the plot here?
OMAR: Fuck! It's just that i don't really know, brother

FZ: Starting from the beginning, the song "A Vicarious Atonement", does it symbolize a reconciliation with God, like the title says?
OMAR: I don't think with God, but with ourselves. With the people around us.

FZ: Tell me about the next cut. Depending of who are you talking with, "Tetragrammaton" possess differents interpretations, which one you give it?
OMAR: It's the meaning of the things that someone cannot talk about, about the powers that cannot be told. For us it was like: "Ok, let's talk about it", and if for some people is God, for other people is Devil, for others the universe or for others the dead... For us is the action of talk about people dont talk about.

FZ:Musically, i'm listening it like the song more influeced by King Crimson, am i right?
OMAR: You know, there's anything, but the most influences is the desire of having songs taking you to different places instead of having linear songs, without movement. Definitly the influences are bands like King Crimson, Yes or Frank Zappa, but also someone can goes behind that music, looks its influences and arrives to Rachmaninov, to Tchaikovsky, or that clasic writters who had so much movement in their music.

FZ: We all ubicate Mars Volta as a band eminently electric, Who suggested to create a song like "Asilos Magdalena" on an acustic base, with a rythm of strongs reminiscences to the bolero?
OMAR: That song began when i started to copy how i looked in my mind my father playing the guitar, when i was a kid. I went and i bought a spanish guitar when i visited some friends in Mexico... I remember i went to a very fucking good street (Note: Some street of the Histerical Center?), and on the whole street it was just one site that had guitars for left hand people. I bought it, i went back to tour and i tried to copy my father's movements. Trying to play like him, the song begans to come out and i loved it. Then i showed to Cedric, explaining what i felt, that it was such a pure power because i was trying to conect with my father... And he loved it. In that moment i thought this song it wasn't about anything else that pure energy, and the pure energy of Mars Volta, is me and Cedric. So i said to him: "I decided this song be like a love song between you and me", representing all the pain we have passed to make this band, like the lost of Jeremy and many other friends. Or the moments when nobody had faith in us. This song is for us; my voice is the guitar and his voice the complement. That's where the concept come from...

FZ:Exactly here, in complete spanish, Cedric sings a disturbing lines in extreme: "El infierno es la unica verdad en mi vida. El oscuro me mantiene" (The hell is the only truth in my life. The dark keeps me)... Is Amputechture an anticristian album?
OMAR: No!, no!, no!, of course not. You have to remember that our records are exercises to the imagination. It's simply that. When we wrote a song we do to enjoy music, play with the words and pictures. Also there are the influences about what is happening in the world and in our lives, in the way we were rised. Being Cedric mexican and me puertorican, the cristianism it's a very big part of our history and our culture. We are not politics; we never tell you that this is good or bad, or still being this or that. It's simply an exercise to the imagination: we play with the words to put out an image and talk from our subconscience to the subconscinece of other person.

FZ: You mentioned the medical topics, "Vermicide" is, in that terms, a powerful medicine to expel parasites from the intestine. Can we think that is a song which Mars Volta uses to kill its own worms, characters that are enough recurrents in your play?
OMAR: I think so. Now you're saying, i hadn't think before, but the entyre record is cut, take off and expel... We did the record to exile certain things we wanted to take off the band; put an end to a period for the fourth record will be more different. We hace certain things that are still happening, and even they like us and we know it's part of our style, we know we have to "take the ceiling off the room to grow up"; because if we don't do it, we're gonna realize we are 50 years old and we are singing the same things or playing the same music. And that's doesn't have a place in Mars Volta, it's imposible.

FZ:What was that you have to expel, what was torturing you?
OMAR: I don't know, i'll can answer your question in four years, because is something it was happening in my subconscience. You know, the easiest way would be telling you we are sounding the same way, but there's a definitive sound that is evolutioning, and we have to be sure for the next record it's goind to evolution in a completely new wave. That someone can say: "It's Mars Volta, but it's different. And i don't know if i like now".

FZ:Does "Day of the Baphomets" refer to the demons day? Or for you it doesn't have a evil sense, like the templarios, which their interpretation of Baphoment is "The God of Light".
OMAR: Is something that we always discuss with people when the topic comes out. For me is something more positive; is the original intent of the union of man, woman and animal. I don't know how to explain it, but is something like going to point of being animals, because a lot of people in this world act like them. But you know, the religion and the history had changed its meaning.

FZ: Why entrust now the artwork of Amputechture to Jeff Jordan, instead of Storm Thorgerson?
OMAR: Like you said before, Amputechture is cut and all that stuff. We didn't think it would be good to use the same person. This is the point for us to start to cut certain things of our system to grow up, and this was one of the first ones that was gone. Now, it uses a painting, something when you see it, it has a little more movement than the previous pictures; or at least someone can experiment a little more. Jeff Jordan could do things that it couldn't do with pictures. This one was very important to us, change the image, because the portrait of the record is like looking Mars Volta's face before listening to the music.

FZ: Someone who doesn't appear was John Frusciante. Tell me a little about his colaboration in the record.
OMAR: John Frusciante was esencially an another musician in Mars Volta. He played in all the themes, but the acustic one. He loved being in a band where he had not to be inmerse in all the process like when he make part of Red Hot Chili Peppers, he memorized all my parts and played them like if i was doing it, and then i played all that was above.

FZ: Do you felt good playing in "Especially in Michigan", from the new Peppers record, too?
OMAR: Of course! is that we are family, you know. When im in LA i'm with them enjoying the time. For this record it was a very organic thing: One night we were watching a movie and i was telling John: "Fuck, as i am the producer of Mars Volta's records, i'd like to be only listening to the music, not to be thinking in what i'm playing and that." In that moment i had the idea to him to play all if he had time, and he said yes. That's how the things are between great friends.

FZ: Talking about friends and family, Is Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez your brother?
OMAR: Yes, sir

FZ: When did you invite him to participate in the record?
OMAR: He's a great percusionist, and that was something the band needed in shows. He have been with us about three years, actually, he made a very fucking great bongo solo in "Day of the Baphomets".

FZ: I know you're compiling material for a DVD, right?
OMAR: Yes, i'm working in a movie about Mars Volta. I already have everything filmed, since the first practice until yesterday. I'm trying to finish this by now.

FZ: Do you come soon to Mexico?
OMAR: To Mexico i think we're not going until February of the next year. I want to start the recording of the fourth album in december to mixed it in january and reiniciate the tour in february.

FZ: Would you come presenting two records?
OMAR: Surely we'll play themes of the fourth record when we arrive to Mexico, although it wont be ready, it will be already mixed. But yeah, we'll play themes of the third and fourth records when we arrive there...

The Mars Volta are on US tour with the RHCP, it’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon and Cedric Bixler Zavala is on his way to the soundcheck. Just a few weeks ago he finished recording the third album Amputechture with his bandmates. Now it’s already time to pitch the voluminous work to the mainstream audience with normal hearing habits of the Chilis.

A venture wich is “overall running nicely” according to Zavala. Especially backstage all might have their fun anyways, as they are kind of a family business: After Flea and Frusciante already helped out in the Mars Volta in the past, the latter played almost every lead guitar part this time. “It’s great”, explains Zavala. “Flea and John watch us sidestage every evening. The most amazing is Fleas daughter though. She’s only a few months old, but I’m certain she’s going to be a musician. As soon as her father plays any musical instrument, she enthusiastically starts to nod and beams with joy.”
But wouldn’t the tour together be a good opportunity to do the one or other gig with Frusciante? “No, we won’t do that. However, John always plays everything on his guitar during our show (sidestage), even if it’s not plugged in. Even though The Mars Volta manage to play live without the Peppers-guitarist, Zavala doesn’t want to miss his work on Amputechture. “The great thing about John is that he can play absolutely everything, and that he completely puts himself into service for music. I like his contribution to Viscera Eyes best. He plays an amazing outro, which puts the track once more in a completely different rhythmical direction. It gets a real Grateful Dead-feeling through that.”

Anyways Cedric is more than satisfied with the new record. Even if there’s no continuous concept of the content in comparison to the two last albums, Amputechture is a self-contained work that reminds of an experimental movie like The Holy Mountain by Jodorowsky…

The rebirth of the album as a conceptual synthesis of art is a clear request of Zavala, whilst he cannot only speak good of the computer age. “Because of the urge to achieve ultimate perfection and the continually computerization we more and more run risk to lose humanity. But at least art gets alive through a human element.” And he thinks that the comparison of his music with movies is more interesting than to repeat: “Of course everyone first thinks of Krautrock, Free-Jazz and Art-Rock. But that is a bit too obvious and boring. Most people would be surprised, if I would say that people like Yoko Ono, Slade or the Shangri-Las influenced us at least just as much.” The latter reminds him of his youth in El Paso, …drive-in cinemas, and nights in front of the parentally record player…

Cedric can’t take much pleasure in his old band today “To be honest, I didn’t listen to any of the old songs since the break up, and I don’t really like them anymore either. I had to sing them for seven years, that’s enough for my whole life.” Too bad.

OMAR Rodriguez-Lopez hears voices. But he's not crazy. He's certain you hear voices too.

You're just not tuning in properly.
"When you're having a good time or you're having a sad moment or you're having a sexual exchange or anything, I think everyone experiences, as cheesy as it sounds, a certain type of soundtrack, a certain arrangement of notes – and some people are better at capturing those and remembering them than others," says Rodriguez-Lopez, who remembers his notes and turned them into Amputechture, the Mars Volta's third studio album, and follow-up to the live album Scab Dates, released late last year.

Like all preceding works from the American rockers, their guitarist, songwriter, producer and band-leader likens his songwriting method on Amputechture to bringing back the details of a dream.

"Most of the time we forget the details," he says, "but we remember certain things: 'There was a hill, and a house on top of the hill, and there was smoke in the air and it was night time'.

"So you draw the picture, and just by involving yourself in the doing, and making contact with that visual current, you start to conspire with that picture to help you remember what you saw. If you keep working at it, all of a sudden you start remembering all the details from your dream."

But though he shows the players of the Mars Volta how to play these songs note-for-note, Rodriguez-Lopez is not the only creative force in the band. Singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala must find the words to match the musical transmissions Rodriguez-Lopez is receiving.

Does this ever cause problems? For example, is Bixler-Zavala dreaming a boat on the water when Rodriguez-Lopez is dreaming a house on a hill?

"I'm gonna knock on wood right now 'cos I'm gonna say that's never happened," Rodriguez-Lopez laughs. "It's always as if I bring to him what I think are completed pieces, and he adds his vocals and then I go 'Of course that's what it was, I couldn't remember that was there'."

More a nightmare than a dream, death surrounded the Mars Volta's first two albums.

With their debut, De-Loused in the Comatorium, it was the death of their hometown friend and mentor Julio Venegas, whose suicide inspired the concept behind the record.

The "death" of their previous band At the Drive-In also hung heavy over proceedings. And last year's Frances the Mute was shadowed by the drug overdose death of the band's "sonic manipulator" Jeremy Ward.

Amputechture has arrived in the world without any such tragedy.

But that doesn't necessarily mean it was a lighter experience to make, Rodriguez-Lopez says.

"There's still a lot of death in this one, it's just not as . . . Even the first two albums, that were very much coated in death, it never feels truly like a dark thing, 'cos we're not coming so much from a place of hurt as we are being happy for a friend and celebrating it.

"This comes from our culture essentially, from Hispanic culture, and the whole romantic martyrdom and appeal to death, and celebrating it – Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), you know.

"And acknowledging that this life we perceive as so important and so real is only but a microcosm of a much larger picture that's happening all the time; it's just so easy to get caught up in what we're in right now."

Parts of Amputechture were recorded in Melbourne earlier this year, in the band's days off between Big Day Out shows. But the term "day off" should be used in inverted commas when referring to Rodriguez-Lopez.

"I don't have a life, basically," he admits with a laugh."I can't escape, there's a burning sensation to explore and to create. The very first week of the festival, we were on the Gold Coast there, and I went out to the rainforest and I lay by the waterfall – but even then, I think 'Oh God, that's a great sound . . . why didn't I bring a recorder?'

"So even when I'm trying to relax there's something else in motion that I feel I have to acknowledge or I have to respect; because I also understand that it won't always be there, I won't always think the way I do now, inevitably that will change and I won't hear as many voices or hear as much music or hear as much beauty as I do right now. That's the one thing I know for sure."

Does he worry about that day coming? "Not at all, I welcome it. Again, it's like death, it's just another stage of existence.

"I'm sure if I cease to hear musical voices in my head it's because something or someone is creating that space for me to be able to receive something else ... Maybe I'll be a really amazing cook one day, I don't know."

Not of this earth
By mike usinger

Publish Date: 7-Sep-2006

The Mars Volta’s latest CD, Amputechture, is not for listeners with short attention spans

Float the idea that the Mars Volta’s just-released Amputechture is entirely too strange for mass consumption, and Cedric Bixler-Zavala doesn’t get offended. On the contrary, the singer and lyricist is quick to agree. And for that, he makes no apologies.

“I appreciate that we have an audience, and I appreciate that someone would actually give themselves up to us,” Bixler-Zavala says, on the line from Sacramento, where the Mars Volta is opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. “But although I appreciate our audience, we don’t do things for them. It’s all for us—we play really self-indulgent music. On the one hand, some of the record is very beautiful, but a lot of it is taxing. And a lot of it can be boring to some people.”

Amputechture is the third full-length from the Mars Volta, a project started by Bixler-Zavala and guitarist-songwriter Omar Rodriguez-Lopez after they bailed from much-hyped posthardcore heroes At the Drive-In. The album may be a lot of things, but boring isn’t one of them. The Mars Volta’s two principals have consciously pushed themselves since rethinking their musical attack plan in 2001, but they’ve never been as ambitious as they are here. Bixler-Zavala uses the term confrontational to describe the hour-long-plus disc, and that’s as good a starting point as any. Definitely not geared toward those suffering from ADHD, five of Amputechture’s eight songs punch in at nine minutes or more. The insanity kicks off with “A Vicarious Atonement”, a seven-minute soundscape that blazes with dream-syndicate vocals and acid-flashed guitar heroics. Nothing—not the genre-mashing freakout that was 2005’s Frances the Mute, definitely not the band’s 2003 debut album De-Loused in the Comatorium—prepares for what unfolds from there. Over the course of an often-insane 75 minutes, the Mars Volta careens wildly from postskronk punk to distortion-stunned jazz to hyper-literate metal to monolithic prog-rock. Pig-squeal saxophone, porn-soundtrack organs, and backward-looped percussion colour songs dominated by Rodriguez-Lopez’s endlessly inventive six-string work and Bixler-Zavala’s helium-powered histrionics.

In + Out

Cedric Bixler-Zavala sounds off on the things that enquiring minds want to know.


On his lyrics: “You know that little guy in the red suit from Twin Peaks [Fire Walk With Me]? I read this thing where he was walking past a room and he heard David Lynch go ‘That’s what I meant!’ I can definitely identify with that. Sometimes I don’t have anything ready so I’ll just try to capture what the song made me feel at the time, even though I’m not using comprehensible, regular words.”


On spirituality: “I look at Native American Indians and see how they worship God, or their version of God. It doesn’t have anything to do with constructing a building or taking your money or drinking wine or eating a fake piece of bread. As corny as it sounds, and not to sound like a hippie, I think there are these spirit forces in nature, and we have to be careful not to offend them.”


On At the Drive-In: “That band was sort of a sidestep of what Omar and I did before At the Drive-In. It was, weird as it sounds, us dumbing things down to be heard and get our foot in the door. Once that happened, it was like ‘We’re tired of wearing this children’s clothing—now we want to show you what we’re really about.’”

Amputechture draws the battle lines early with the album’s second track, “Tetragrammaton”, which starts out like a math-rock–guitar war then ends in a jet-roar wash of undiluted white noise. By the time the song wraps up, you’re either convinced the Mars Volta is the most mind-blowing act in modern rock ’n’ roll or so frustratingly impenetrable that you’ll have a new appreciation for the idiotic simplicity of the Ramones.

For proof that the band alienates as many people as it manages to captivate, all Bixler-Zavala has to do is look out from the stage when he’s touring with a mainstream-oriented act like the Peppers. On most nights, the songs off Amputechture aren’t converting a lot of Red Hot fans to the Mars Volta cause.

“Some of the shows have been duds,” Bixler- Zavala says candidly. “The older Chili Pepper audiences just sit there and have no clue. It’s like we’re up there trying to put on the full-on show that everyone talks about and writes about, and then you’ve got a bunch of old folks who just want to hear ‘Under the Bridge’. And that’s no offence to the Chili Peppers—they are such a fantastic band.”

The singer, who’s easily one of the most frenetic frontmen in the business, thinks he knows why the average rock-radio fan has difficulty understanding the Mars Volta.

“I guess what we’re doing is closer to jazz and classical music,” he suggests, “because there are so many parts and pieces. But we’re more like modern classical—people whose stuff doesn’t get interpreted that often because they are so out there.”

If the Mars Volta challenges listeners, Bixler-Zavala says that only makes sense because he and Rodriguez-Lopez started the band to challenge themselves. That was something they felt they weren’t doing with At the Drive-In, which they left just as it had exploded into a full-fledged buzz band.

“At the Drive-In was very meat and potatoes—a one-trick pony,” Bixler-Zavala says. “Everyone was attracted to us because we put on a good live show. But there were never really any memorable songs or melodies with that band. The sound really stemmed from us being a 20th-generation version of what had happened in Washington, DC, and in San Diego. As offensive as it sounds, it was very white, linear music and I wasn’t having that. I was bored.”

Amputechture proves the singer has no intention of becoming hemmed in artistically with the Mars Volta. After delivering full-blown concept records with both De-Loused and Frances, Bixler-Zavala doesn’t tell a single story this time out. He describes the songs on the new disc as David Lynch–like short films examining the idea of faith. The starting point for his lyrical inspiration was the story of a nun who ended up crucified in Romania after a priest became convinced that she was possessed. What follows are explorations of everything from the wonders of the brain’s pineal gland to the untapped powers of the Amazon rain forest. But don’t expect Bixler-Zavala’s approach to such subjects to be any more straightforward than Rodriguez-Lopez’s music; sample lyrics on Amputechture include “That cesspool it becomes you just north of the eyebrows” from “Vermicide” and the “Viscera Eyes” head-scratcher “Wait! I’ve seen the ark shake from your pneumonic tongue/But the Braille that you weave of itself it shall read aloud”.

“Omar keeps a lot of my gibberish takes, and later on I’ll have to attempt to write words around them,” the singer says. “On this record you’ll see a lot of spots where words are missing because I gave up. A lot of times what you’ll hear is just a feeling rather than a real word. But it’s the feeling that should hit you, not exactly what it is that I’m trying to say.”

In other words, Bixler-Zavala isn’t afraid to speak in tongues on Amputechture. On the subject of religion, the lyricist, who was raised Mexican-Catholic, is convinced a greater power is out there, but he doesn’t believe that any organized religion knows exactly what that is. What he loves most about the Mars Volta is that—even when the masses don’t entirely get it—the band gives him something to believe in on a nightly basis.

“I do have a sense of spirituality,” he says, “and I think that we attain it the more and more we kind of improv and kind of close our eyes and let things happen. That way I can pay my respects and have my own version of church when we play live. What you’re seeing up there is my own communion.”

The Mars Volta opens for the Red Hot Chili Peppers at GM Place next Thursday

The Necesary Tribute

Even it hasn't been a long time from their last estudio album, Frances the Mute, The Mars Volta is coming back with a new record, named "Amputechture". The title Amputechture it was taken, as a kind of tribute, by a word that used the dead member of the band, Jeremy Ward. "I don't know exactly what does it means, but i know that join words "ampute" and "arquitechture" remain some very interesting pictures, both together make me imagine a million things and i hope people to see this way", explains the singer of the band, Cedric Bixler, who talked to Rolling Stone Mexico.

This new chapter in the band's history, that we know as Amputechture, it was written by its totality by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. "It wasn't like Frances the Mute, just the song "Cassandra Gemini", because there's a lot of Juan Alderete and John Theodore", explains Cedric. "Omar wrote the parts and there was no other way to play the drums or bass, because it was prewritten. Omar has that vision, he knows where to go, left, right, he got already diagramed for all the world".

Where do you think music takes you?
It can takes you to places that fisically don't exist. I think is the auditive equivalent, if it does right, to take some psychotropic(?) drugs.

How much influenced you the inmigrants march?
It was an influence. I always think about things like why in California a lot of latin people likes Morrisey; i don't understand the conection. Then there is the relation between Hailé Selassié and jamaicans; i don't understand why, because Hailé Selassié wasn't the new messiah, or Jim Jones in Guyana being an influence to a ton of black people and to other people in San Francisco, particularly. I wanted to experiment writting about the girl murdered in Poland, but through the eyes of the latin community in USA; consider it like the first shot, a warning shot.

Now in USA, especially in California, a lot of jobs like cut the grass, being nanny or clean houses are realized by latin people. This story is about something that is happening far away and has no real connection with what is happening here, but the result is a mess, the kind of revolution that is giving slowly, that people don't see coming. If you left your kids with nanny, she's going to be and influence; those who cut the grass going to plant things in your house while you are not home. I think it's going to result an interesting fiction story when both parts be together. Seeing this crazy woman of Poland influencing someone who is on the other side of the world and apparently has no conecction with her makes seem it has no sense, but for me it has.

In the last two records, the death had an important paper, like a tribute to dead friends, is still present in this album?
Definitely, is present in the beginning, not in the end. As the story i was telling you about that possessed girl in Poland murdered by a priest. It's difficult think this happening nowadays, but this story is relationed with how some societies treat their mad people. In some places people are praised if they are mad; in America they send you to prision if you're mad, the don't see you as an aerial. I think this record is relationed with that kind of stuffs and death.

Death is at the beginning of the record, do you think is the beginning of other thing?
Of course. We all are educated to be affair of it. All record, in general, has that epiphysis and things like dynamite, that other things can activate. There are people who said: "The extraterrestials robbed me". I t could be those people got a pineal gland very active, and that's why they create an alucination. That's the part of the death that comforts me, or scares me: it's like a ritual you have to go to arrive to the other side of existence. Where the espiritual energy that you atract comes from?
I don't know,but i think it's because we put attention to the aerial, even we left all to put it more attention. Everytime i'm in the middle of a conversation and i stop, i take out a pencil and i try to write, and i considere it real because, if it has no attention, it can't be understood.
I don't know where that espirituality comes from, maybe it's because we have been around by the death.

Is the 30th anniversary of punk, how much did punk influence you in music??
It's present. Now we rehearse in that i only can describe as an old studio of punk; when i go out by the back and i see all the old records on the floor, that reminds where we come from. I'm not an estudied singer, and Omar is not an educated guitarist. We try to learn to keep us healthy, in a good position, and touring. We came from the ideology of "do it by yourself" and i never forget that.

What do you think about bands that participate in Warped Tour?
In general, all that scene is the truely sad condition of culture.

How much do you think punk values had changed?
I don't think they're punk bands. For me, a punk band is going to scare you, make you cry, is going to dare you and is going to make you go home to revaluate your life. A lot of bands that play in Warped Tour are cheating and they know. You got more respect for youserlf when you really live playing alone, without a festival. I see it as the tool for rich guys; most of them come from rich familys, and Warped Tour help them to cheat. At The Drive-In, and i'm so proud to say it, never played in a Warped Tour. So much times, we played in front nobody, that's how you got respect and pay your debts. Even there's who are decents (i know Mike Watt had participated in Warped Tour and other good bands), in general is like the mall was taken from its place and then its put in a parking lot. The Jesús Lizard's singer, David Yow, is a clasic example of someone who is mad and it would be in a psychriatic hospital if it wasn't because of rock music; he is the personification of a shaman. A shaman with good or bad energy, he rescripted completely the fucking book of how to be a frontman. I think more kids need to see a band like Jesús Lizard instead of Good Charlotte or My Chemical Romance. Is not to be disrespectful to those bands, is just they are so shinning, and punk rock is not shinning and polished, is sharp, foul and scares you.

A Nightmare?
Last December, the band went to the britanic festival A Nightmare Before Christmas, in which an eclectic alination reunited that included Diamanda Galas, The Kills, Dalek, Mastodon, Acid Mothers Temple, Michael Rother, Holger Czukay, Anthony and the Johnsons and Coco Rosie, to mention some. "It was like being in a recreation, we went to play in a festival where we got really influeced, we got excited and came back to use what we learned. I want to say some bands like Coco Rosie or Anthony and the Johnsons made me revaluate my way to sing. Especially Anthony, is like a modern Nina Simone", the singer says," It what was happening to us in that moment. You should put passion in what you're doing. The mark of a musician is making you to feel something especial. If you can get gooseflesh, you're in the right way".

The Mars Volta opens for the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the 'Dome Sept. 16
Lucky lads get one Chili reception
Mike Ross
Sun Media
September 16, 2006

It probably comes as no surprise the singer of The Mars Volta has dabbled in hallucinogenic drugs.


PSYCHO PSYCHEDELIC ... The Mars Volta, above, will bring their unique brand of alt-synth music to Calgary Sept. 16, when they open for the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Saddledome.


Heck, the Houston-based band is the nearest musical equivalent to an acid trip that comes to mind. It sounds like Carlos Castaneda poetry set to a mish-mash of heavy metal, punk rock, atonal jazz and, believe it or not, lilting Latin music styles. It figures, since both singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala and his partner Omar Rodriguez-Lopez come from a Latino heritage.

“I don’t think I contribute musically with people who haven’t been through any sort of psychedelic drug use,” says Cedric.

“We don’t use anything like that for live playing or recording. I’ve overstayed my welcome with most drug use. I just have what’s left over — an imprint of something I did see on the other side that I’m still baffled by today and it still influences my writing.”

When probed, he describes an experience that leaves little doubt he’s on the level, such as “meeting God and things like that.”

He also floats the idea that
hallucinogenic drugs are just the plant kingdom’s way of trying to communicate with the animal kingdom, and that if we open our minds to certain ideas, human beings “might be able to evolve a little bit more.”

Yes, he’s out there.

Opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the ’Dome Sept. 16, The Mars Volta is soon to release its weirdest album yet — which is really saying something — called Amputechture. You will get eight songs in 76 minutes, including a 17-minute epic called Tetragrammaton (supposedly a term for God).

Comparing Amputechture to a collection of Twilight Zone episodes, Cedric says he isn’t sure how clearly his ideas will come through.

Maybe the listener, he suggests, “will come away thinking like a schizophrenic person.”

The band’s last trip through Alberta, opening for System of a Down, was greeted with indifference at best and thrown objects at worst. The band was unfazed.

Cedric, in fact, admits he relishes playing to unconverted “rednecks” more than headlining shows for Mars Volta fans.

“We passionately know that we’re right in what we’re doing.

“It doesn’t matter if people don’t like it.”

FZ: Do you come soon to Mexico?
OMAR: To Mexico i think we're not going until February of the next year. I want to start the recording of the fourth album in december to mixed it in january and reiniciate the tour in february.

"Mars Volta: Cedric Bixler-Zavala spiega da dove viene il rancore verso la religione cattolica.
Il gruppo nato dalla separazione degli At The Drive In ha recentemente pubblicato un nuovo album intitolato “Amputecthure” all'interno del quale Cedric Bixler-Zavala, l'autore dei testi, prende come bersaglio preferito la religione, in particolare quella cattolica.

A differenza dei precedenti “De-Loused in the Comatorium” e “Frances the Mute” il tema di “Amputecthure” non è uno solo, i Mars Volta affrontano più situazioni sia dal punto di vista di testi sia da quello musicale, anche se poi il differente metodo porta allo stesso risultato, ossia un disco progressivo, dilatato e molto complesso.

“Sono stato obbligato ad abbracciare la religione cattolica fin da piccolo” ha spiegato Cedric Bixler-Zavala a Gigwise.com “A scuola ho litigato con il professore di religione.
Andavo molto male nella scuola pubblica, così hanno pensato che sarebbe stato molto meglio mettermi in una scuola cattolica.
Questo mi ha distanziato tantissimo dai ragazzi che credevano veramente in Dio.
Quando penso al cattolicesimo in generale, mi vengono in mente quelle persone che immaginavano la terra piatta.
Ci sarebbe molto più da dire su quello che succede la fuori.
E con il cattolicesimo, ci sono rituali decisamente inutili – siediti, mangia questo pezzo di pane, dacci i soldi – e se non sei attento ti potresti ritrovare con un prete”.

Sul significato di quest'ultima frase si sono interrogati anche quelli di Gigwise.com. "

Progageddon: The Mars Volta
by James Mills

There must be a moment between the back flips and tango gesticulations when Mars Volta vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala - on their current US tour - stares out at an arena packed with middle-aged Red Hot Chili Peppers fans and wonders whether the aforementioned gymnastics, the 20-minute jams of salsa punk abstraction and percussive onslaughts are really going to be worth the effort.

‘Amputechture’ is the band's most challenging album to date, and it's oddly ironic that it is currently being premiered across the US to seated audiences of gawping "soccer moms." Speaking to Gigwise from somewhere between Toronto and Montreal, Bixler-Zavala sounds like he's very nearly had enough. Pinning down what's making the ‘Amputechture’ tour unique, he says, "Trying to look like you're having a good time when nobody else looks like they're having a good time."

It's a sense of alienation that seems very much at the forefront of what it's like to be involved in the Mars Volta - whether as a band member onstage, or as part of the crowd trying to make sense of the formidably harsh sound of zero compromise that makes their latest album so powerful, if not immediately likeable.

The feeling of an entire arena struggling to make sense of what the hell you're up to is palpable to Bixler-Zavala, who has little interest in holding anyone's hand. "We'll play something like ‘The Widow’ [single off ‘Frances the Mute’]," he says, "and then you kinda have this sigh of relief like, 'Oh, it's this band!' At that point they're kind of like, 'Ok, we're supposed to like this, I guess?' and then we launch into more ‘Amputechture’ material."

The image of Bixler-Zavala as the stern prophet mercilessly sifting the true fans from the confused dilettantes is a hard one to shake, and his elitist tendencies very nearly become distasteful as he chuckles at the Chili Peppers fans who "don't even own a p-funk album." But he does care about the people who come to see the Mars Volta, or at least is more aware of them than the band's relentlessly self-indulgent urge for exploration would lead you to believe.

AmuptechtureIt's not the only sign of the Mars Volta beginning to engage with the wider world, and ‘Amputechture’ deals with issues from religion, cultural differences between Europe and South American to the pro-immigrant marches that took place in the US this spring. It's also telling that the songs on the album evoke a sense of time and place for Bixler-Zavala, reminding him of specific locations during the ‘Frances the Mute’ tour, where ideas flowered and songs were created -- Poland for ‘Tetragrammaton’, Belgium for ‘Asilos Magdalena’. In general, he says, "When I think of ‘Amputechture’ now and the way it sounds it reminds me of our stint at ATP. Our jams there had a lot of the ideas that ended up on ‘Amputechture’. Plus the weather was just miserable, and that was the perfect setting for the kind of things we're talking about on the album."

If Bixler-Zavala freely imposes judgement on his audience, one can only guess at the kind of scrutiny the rest of the Mars Volta go through. As well as that seems to be working, it has resulted in drummer Jon Theodore's expulsion from the band for "laziness" and lack of commitment. Says Bixler-Zavala, "you can't be in a band, or a relationship with someone, if you're constantly asking, 'Do you really like me?' And they don't really like you, they just like the benefits of [the relationship]. We come to a city, and we play one album live, but we're making another album during the day and then [that night] after we play.

"And Jon just wasn't having that. Jon likes his women, Jon likes his surfing, Jon likes his drinking... You can ask any fan that was in Hamburg when we played for Frances the Mute. We were set to play the last thirty minutes of the set and Jon took off, because the night before he partied too much." So Theodore out, and Blake Fleming in. According to Bixler-Zavala the difference in work ethic between the two is like night and day. "If I were to walk over to [Blake] now and say 'we need to record some ideas,' he would drop what he was doing. He understands the music comes first."

Fleming's history with the Mars Volta actually goes back further than Theodore's, the former having been replaced by the latter during the embryonic stages of the band. Fleming had moved to LA to live with Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez for five months as the Mars Volta's first drummer, before leaving on unfriendly terms. Bixler-Zavala recalls Fleming's initial stint in the Mars Volta: "Apart from the fact that there was a lot of drug intake, we were just not getting along. There was a lot of miscommunication. At the time he was involved with a woman who was very controlling. Some of her ideas were a little off kilter, and it just wasn't working. She wasn't in the band, and she was trying to be in the band. We just couldn't have her around. She was always trying to put her two cents in and she had no idea what the music was about. That's where we [Blake and the Mars Volta] butted heads. He was into the girl and we weren't into the girl. And so we said, 'Well, we're going to find somebody else who's into being in the band without having the crutch of needing a woman with him all the time.’

"For all the stereotypes and all the myths behind Yoko Ono... there was a moment when I used to buy into that thinking yeah she's the fucked up one, and she fucked everything up for the Beatles. But the girl [Fleming] was with at the time was very much the embodiment of that. It's like the Spinal Tap movie when the wife comes in and goes, 'Ok I have these sketches for you guys, you're going to be the bug and you're going to be the lion...' She was totally like that. We said we don't want her and he said well I want her and I can't be without her and so we said, 'sorry.'" Needless to say, Fleming is no longer with "Yoko" and so is, in Bixler-Zavala's eyes, the perfect drummer for the Mars Volta.

Religion comes closest to being ‘Amputechture's overarching theme, and Catholicism especially bears the brunt of Bixler-Zavala's vitriolic resentment. "I grew up being forced to embrace it. I was the kid in school who argued with my religion teacher. I was doing so bad in public school they thought it would be great to put me in catholic school. It gave me some distance between me and all the kids who were really into God. I just think in general that Catholicism reminds me of people who think the earth is flat. There's so much more to what is really out there. And with Catholicism, there's so much unnecessary ritual -- sit down, eat this bread, give us money -- and if you're not careful you might end up with one of the priests."

He describes the song ‘Tetragrammaton’ as a "jab in the ribs of organised religion" in the sense that it refers to the name of God which, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is taboo and should never be pronounced. In fact, Bixler-Zavala had to reassure keyboardist Ikey, a practicing Jehovah's Witness, that the song wasn't entirely blasphemous since it focuses mainly on the story of a Romanian nun who was brutally murdered last year because she was thought to have been possessed.

As cynical as Bixler-Zavala is about organised religion, he's remarkably accepting of the wackier end of spirituality and has no problem relating the oddly mystical to his daily life in the Mars Volta. "When we have most of our problems technically on stage, it's some of our friends fucking with us, our friends that aren't alive anymore. Other than that, there's just moments where I just feel something else in the room. I would like to hope that there is a spirituality involved in what we do when we play live - maybe not so much when we do these Chili Peppers dates - but when we do our own shows there are these gates that are opened. It's not the skill, it's the fact that you have to open up everything about your head in order to make the music happen. Paying attention to the antennas - they control you, you don't control them. You have to give yourself up."

Whether these are the symptoms of borderline schizophrenia, or the merest glimpse at the level of commitment that hopefully won't culminate in poisoned kool aid, is anyone's guess. What's undeniable though, is that if the end result of so much strangeness is an electrifying jolt of maverick creativity from a band that sounds like no one else, maybe being barking mad isn't so bad after all.