"Sometimes Omar and I have to tell people to just trust it. Not everyone fully trusts. There's a vision with what we do, with so many left and right turns, so we can't just sit down and explain it to everybody. There's about eight of us in the band now, and I think it would be really rough to have to explain everything from scratch about every song to everybody."
The frustration in Cedric Bixler-Zavala's voice is palpable. The lead singer of prog-rock torchbearers The Mars Volta is discussing the recording of the band's new album, Amputechture, and with every word that leaves his lips, the El Paso, Texas native's ire grows.
"For me, that's what's so self-defeating about being in a band - that people tend to over-talk the situation," he explains. "There's no need to be a fuckin' method actor. If you trust the end result, and hopefully everyone in the band does, then it'll work out. But I think sometimes they just don't get it."
Jon Theodore may be one of those folks who didn't get it. On July 28th, a little more than a month before the new album was due to hit the streets, the band announced the departure of Theodore, the drummer for The Mars Volta since 2001. In a statement to Modern Drummer, Theodore said the decision was "long overdue and unquestionably the best thing for everyone involved. We had a great run of things, made some decent records, blew it up for a minute, and had some really great times. But the life ran out of it."
Theodore isn't the only one who's feeling out of the loop. Reviews of Amputecture have been spotty at best, traversing the spectrum from outright snarkiness (Pitchfork) to effusive praise (Mojo). It seems one either loves the complex cacophony of The Mars Volta's music or despises it for the very same reason. The critical praise heaped on the band's two previous albums - Frances the Mute and Deloused in the Comatorium – has been notably absent for Amputechture, an album that finds the band exploring a more subtle, mellower side of their music. Whereas reviewers in the past have associated the band's epic compositions and fire-and-brimstone subject matter with the likes of Led Zeppelin, the mellifluous quality of Amputechture sounds much more influenced by Syd Barrett and early Pink Floyd. As fate would have it, I spoke with Cedric on July 7th, the day Barrett was found dead at his home in Cambridge, England due to complications with diabetes.
JamBase: I wanted to start out with something because it's kind of topical. I don't know if you heard the news, but Syd Barrett passed away today...Cedric Bixler-Zavala: Yeah, I just heard that.
JamBase: "Vicarious Atonement," off the new album, sounds a lot like an eerie, haunting Pink Floyd ballad to me. I wanted to ask you how, if any, has Pink Floyd influenced you as an individual musician or The Mars Volta's music specifically?Cedric Bixler-Zavala: Well, with our last album and just the way we sound in general, everyone's always throwing Led Zeppelin at us, but I think it's important to clarify; If we're going to own up to anything, it's Syd Barrett's influence. I can't even think of how much he's influenced what we do. I mean, I even just got this really bitchin' fuckin' photo of him with two big sugar cubes in his mouth while he's in Sausalito, which is the tour that he went crazy on in The States, I think. It's a really beautiful, beautiful, beautiful picture of him. What else can I say? He's the original punk. I always dug his guitar playing, but I loved his lyrics. His music, especially his solo albums, those really did it for me. They made me want to make songs like that. Syd Barrett's all over what we do in The Mars Volta.
I tend to think that Omar's guitar playing is a weird combination of Greg Ginn, Sonny Sharrock, and Syd Barrett, especially when Omar uses the slide. For me, Syd Barrett is one of the main influences of The Mars Volta.
JamBase: I figured as much and given the news today, I thought it would be a good way to start. One of the other things I wanted to talk about is the role of religion in your music. On the new album, you have song titles like "Vicarious Atonement," "Tetragrammaton," "Asilos Magdalena" – all have obvious religious connotations. What role has religion played in your music or what influence has it had?Cedric Bixler-Zavala: I think the closest we come to a spiritual band is when we improvise because that's something that's beyond our control. We do have some sort of control of it, but it really is something else coming through us. That's as far as spirituality comes with us.
"Tetragrammaton," meaning the infallible name of God, is the name you're not supposed to say or use. I thought it would be perfect to use it for a song title. I like using these religious terms and subject matters because I think that they could be taboo sometimes, like the whole don't bring up religion and politics conversation because someone might get mad. Using those words is almost like trying to diffuse the potency of it and show that it's just a word. So I'm just dressing the compositions with these kind of taboo things, taboo for me because of growing up in a Catholic family and always having the fear of God looming over me instead of an appreciation for it.
I've been reading a lot of books about DMT use and how some atheists would take DMT and their doctors would tell them that if you took .35 grams, if you're an atheist, you wouldn't be anymore. I'm interested in the parts of religion that aren't talked about. The Bible was just too many cooks in the kitchen. It's just a bunch of men telling you what happened, and I just don't believe it's that way. I think any intelligent person would know that. For all we know, Jesus was a black woman. I'd be excited if that was the case because, God, can you imagine the wrath that's going to come down on the supposed Armageddon Day? I mean, Jesus, all the male species will be wiped out or something...
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned...Yeah, exactly!
Are you a practitioner of organized religion today?No, not at all. I don't believe. If anything, I think Americans should look to Native American Indians. They just built a teepee and worshipped in there. In general, white America seems to put this emphasis on everything but spirituality. There's a church. There are monetary donations. There's all this stuff attached to it that's just horrible. Catholicism is horrible in general. They had the chance to stand up to Nazis; that wasn't a shining moment for them. I don't agree with a lot of it. Having grown up Mexican Catholic, I just saw a lot of hypocrisy in it. I don't want to be afraid of my creator, and that's what I was taught to be. If I was afraid of this guy, why would I even want to be friends with him?
I suppose the idea of a vengeful God was some sort of preventative measure to keep people in line...Yeah, and then he's also supposed to be loving too? It's a bit too much for me...
Is there any specific piece of art – a book, a painting, a poem, or maybe another piece of music – that informed or influenced the making of this record?"
Helena Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled." That stuff's really interesting. I've been watching a couple of documentaries about the occult roots of Nazism and things like that. I just think it's really interesting subject matter.
What other themes or threads run through and interconnect this new album?Well, there are the marches that just happened and the whole discussion of should we kick immigrants out and if so, where are they going to go? I've always been interested in the Latin community. In California, it's common to have Latin people cutting grass, being nannies, doing everything that actually keeps society glued together. And it's totally underappreciated. So I thought, "What if this person at the other end of the world had influenced an uprising of the people that are the glue of California?" What if that was the connection? I'd actually seen some girl on the news when I was in Poland that was supposedly possessed, and they didn't know what to do with her. So the priest put her outside in the rain and shoved a sock in her mouth, and the next day she was dead. They showed the footage of the actual mass happening on CNN the next day. The priest was some kind of Rasputin character, and so I just wanted to connect both - an uprising that happens in Latin-majority California and kind of tie in the whole schism that's going on with foreigners wanting to be recognized as people instead of just immigrants.
I just thought it would be interesting if that was their trigger, if that was the gunshot. Like the catalyst to the supposed holy race war. I thought it would be more interesting to have this character in Poland with the thread of Catholicism being the identifying mark for Latin people to go, "That's her. That means it's on. Let's go. Let's take what's rightfully ours."
Kind of a call to arms then...Yeah, but I would never necessarily want to use violence as a means to anything. It's just a fictional tale that should make you appreciate the people who are actually the glue of this society, especially in California. Black Flag said it best in their song "White Minority." And I'm not saying anything against white people or anything. It's just that that is the state of California. Just like it's the state of El Paso, Texas, where I grew up. It's literally Mexico – it just happens to be a little point north that got taken over.
I wanted to ask you about the title itself, Amputechture. I imagine it's reflective of this theoretical race/religion uprising that we just talked about.It is, but it's also loose-ended too. I hope someone doesn't have to walk away thinking that that is the story per se. When I grew up, I didn't know all the lyrics to The Misfits. I came up with whatever Danzig was coming up with. (Laughs) I would like someone to do the same thing with the way our album art looks and what the title means to them. Amputechture is a made-up compound word that Jeremy [Ward, former band member who passed away of a heroin overdose in May 2003] came up with. I just thought it stuck really well.In terms of this new record, how would you compare it to your two previous studio records, Frances the Mute and Deloused in the Comatorium?There's more of the mellower side. I like that side too, when we don't use drums. I think a lot of people see us as this octopus drumming with really busy parts that demand a lot of your attention. On this album, there's the influence of us doing ATP [London Festival, All Tomorrow's Parties] in the middle of recording the album and playing with people like Anthony or CocoRosie or even Diamanda Gallas. In fact, I would go as far as to say for me, vocally, watching those three and getting to see them that close, because we had access as hosts, it kind of changed the way I viewed singing. It was a good way to get a fire under me to try something different and new. It energized us and was personally inspirational to the point where I think we even mimicked them to a fault...
Do you find yourself doing that sometimes? When you're out on tour either on a regular basis with another band or just hitting festivals and running into the same people, do you find that you sometimes are borrowing a little bit from some of your friends and favorite peers?Definitely. When we were doing some dates with Hella, I found myself trying to vocally do what Zack [Hill] was doing on the drums. I could never touch that, but I was so jazzed by what he did that it just made me want to do what I do.
Blonde Redhead had a big impact on the melancholy side of what we do, I think.
That applies to Antony as well. To me, Antony is like the missing link for indie rock kids who don't know about Nina Simone. But it's his own thing, and it's just a great influence to have. I want to turn my mom onto Antony, because she was a huge Boy George fan.
It's interesting you bring up Nina Simone, because that was one of the things I wrote down in my notes about your own vocal approach. Your vocals are very reminiscent in my mind of female jazz singers like Nina Simone with the melismatic approach. Would you consider Nina Simone one of your chief influences?Yeah, definitely one of them. I mean,
I've always had a super, super strong Bjork undercurrent in what I do. There have been times where I'm singing something and I think, "Fuck, that's from the first Sugarcubes album. That's 'Coldsweat' to a T." So I have to figure out a way to make it an influence and not a Xerox copy. I would say female energy is more part of what I do vocally than anything else.
I did time growing up listening to The Misfits and really angular, angry stuff, but then I graduated and blossomed from that. I'm just more in touch with female energy as far as that's concerned 'cause there's so much aggressive energy going on behind me that I think it needs the high notes. It needs to pierce, it needs to have that banshee quality, I think.
It presents a nice yin and yang thing from the music to your vocals...Even if I get made fun of for it sometimes, like opening up for System of a Down.
There are tons of males in the audience who don't know if I'm a guy or a girl. I guess that's a good thing. I guess it makes them think a little. It might give some small kid the courage, if he has that range, to not be afraid to dive right into it. Not everything has to be macho and so tough all the time.
For the last album, I'd read in a previous interview that Omar had everyone in the band play their parts completely on their own without any knowledge of the other musicians' parts in order to have you guys play without any kind of preconceived notions as to what was being done before you did your take. Was that the same approach that was taken for this album?Yeah, definitely. Even though people rehearsed the parts, they didn't know how it all connected. Certain songs are just chopped all together and there were places where we only kept certain little parts that seemed the coolest. No one understood where it was going, but that's fun because you tend to put a certain emotion into it when you don't know what's going on, when you don't know that there's a left turn coming up or anything like that. It's just fun that way. It helps diffuse the purpose of doing what technically proficient musicians tend to do, which is just talk about it and overanalyze it. By that time, it's lunch and you've wasted studio time.
I wanted to ask you about your relationship with John Frusciante. I know that he worked on this album. Can you tell me how you guys first met and his role in the production of this record?I first met John with our other band, De Facto. We opened up for him and then he and Omar were just inseparable after that. They just became really good friends, and I think they influence each other back and forth all the time.
Because he'd played on the other records, it just seemed natural for him to be on this record.
Since Omar had to produce the record, he would teach John a song right before we were gonna track it, literally. I'd walk up to the studio, and they'd be on the street corner sitting on the sidewalk learning a song right before we were gonna record it. That way, Omar could be hands-free, directing everyone in sort of a Zappa-type mode, I guess.
It worked because John can do that. John can learn something no matter how complicated, no matter how many parts. He can learn it right then and there, and that's what we needed. That's what Omar needed so that he could be the producer and kinda stand outside of the situation and listen to it without having to play guitar, especially for these songs. Some of the parts demand so much attention that I don't think he could be doing the role of producer and guitar player at the same time. So John is like a great secret weapon to have. He knows what is needed immediately and helps speed things along.
There wasn't too much art school discussion over it. We just did it and it was over. It was fast and it was great.
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.
