Recensioni

Unless you're the kind of prog-rock nut who plans to buy I Love You, Man on DVD just to relive the scene at the Rush concert, you're probably suffering from an acute case of Mars Volta Fatigue right about now. (Symptoms include naming your child Parallax Symbiosis and ordering the "deaf con of Angora goats" at fancy restaurants.) Guitarists Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, in particular, has diluted the potency of the band's brand, issuing an endless string of increasingly impenetrable solo discs that make you wonder if the guy is paid by the note.

Given its typically foreboding title, Octahedron would not appear to be a cure for this disorder. Yet these eight tracks - only one of which stretches past the eight minute mark! - actually make up The Mars Volta's most consistently compelling slab since 2005's salsafied Frances the Mute. Make no mistake: Rodriguez-Lopez still favors 12 solos where one will do, and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala's lyrics make no more literal sense than they ever have. But on gorgeous psych-soul ballads like "Copernicus" and "Since We've Been Wrong" burn with purpose, not just technique. "I Can't believe anymore," Bixler-Zavala wails over an escalating punk-funk groove in "Desperate Graves." For the first time in a while though, you might.

7/10

First Impressions: Mars Volta, Octahedron
by Staff | 05.05.2009

The Mars Volta
Octahedron
Warner
Release Date: 6/23

Tracklisting:

1. Since We’ve Been Wrong
2. Teflon
3. Halo of Nembutals
4. With Twilight As My Guide
5. Cotopaxi
6. Desperate Graves
7. Copernicus
8. Luciforms

First Impressions:

-Octahedron begins with a singular note that makes you think your speakers are broken but then surprisingly, in streams a pleasant and calm guitar intro and Cedric Bixler Zavala’s melancholy voice crooning on about what seems like lost love mixed in metaphors of time and distance. “Since We’ve Been Wrong” is a mellow Mars Volta treat.

-“Cotopaxi” shows the band’s punk roots while mixing wah-wahs and distortions with moody catchy chants that would make prog rockers grin from ear to ear.

-Just because Octahedron is more placid than past Mars Volta albums doesn’t mean there isn’t room for sweet, sweet solos. “Desperate Graves” ends with a slow electric guitar solo, while "Luciforms" starts with drive-by guitar sounds that lead to a more than decent solo towards the end, blending into a sea of keys and drums.

Key Tracks:

“Since We’ve Been Wrong,” “Cotopaxi,” "Luciforms"

Predictions:
While Mars Volta may consider Octahedron their "acoustic" album, it is far from traditional acoustics: i.e. there are electrics! There are actually so many intricacies in this record, it's hard to just listen once.

Links:

Official: http://www.marsvolta.com

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/themarsvolta

The Mars Volta - Octahedron
An admirable new direction...

Mercury
The Mars Volta - Octahedron


Apart from their resemblance to Mos and Richmond from The IT Crowd (Errr, what? – obviously-not-blind Ed), everything about The Mars Volta is very serious.

They have a wonderful sense of the fantastical, and are able to convincingly use fanciful stories from their own lives as an influence, both on their lyrics and music and as an exciting melodramatic backdrop to their already bombastic progressive rock albums. Take last effort ‘The Bedlam in Goliath’ for example: its recording was riddled with disasters and weird tomb-of-Tutankhamun-esque happenings, all attributed to a ouija board the band picked up in Jerusalem. Whether the stories are true or not is unimportant, as they add a vital element of gravitas and mysticism to the music that the band seems to be constantly looking for.

While there's no amusing back-story, the same is definitely evident in ‘Octahedron’ – a title that brings to mind mystic cults, or Kenneth Anger films. Speaking about the release in an interview last year, Cedric Bixler-Zavala said: "It's more mellow. It's a little more of what we consider our 'acoustic' side." And it does seem to be as close as the band will ever get to acoustic – while ‘…Goliath’ opened with the face-melting ‘Aberinkula’, ‘Octahedron’ opens with several seconds of silence, slowly building with weeping guitars and fiery vocals, which, perhaps as always with prog-rock, run a fine line between passionate and laughable.

Things run in a similar vein through the first handful of songs, with some menacing lyrics carrying most of the weight over some pretty standard compositions from the usually experimental outfit, with the creeping, cosmic introduction to ‘Halo of Nembutals’ providing the only real highlight. Fifth track ‘Cotopaxi’ kicks out the jams with a characteristically leaden riff; at the one-minute-thirty mark, just as the song seems about to explode into a solo, comes a fantastic switch around of reverb and guitar wash.

Unfortunately things don't really hold at this high point, and while ‘Octahedron’ as a whole is passably interesting, it just doesn't reach a level of experimentation that we've come to expect from the band. It's certainly admirable to take things in a different, musically ‘mellower’ direction, but The Mars Volta simply haven't dragged themselves far enough down their chosen path.

Words: Steven Garrard

6/10

http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/music/reviews...edron-8399.html

Album Review: The Mars Volta - Octahedron

Today 11:00

Released June 22

I’ve always found The Mars Volta a little baffling in one of those ‘love or loathe’ types of way. I mean, there’s no way a fan of someone like N-Trance is going to love these guys, but then again, people who likes The Mars Volta probably don’t like N-Trance.

Either way, their new album, Octahedron is their fifth album to date, so whether you like them or not, they must be doing something right. As one of the most adventurous musical collectives I’ve ever come across, this latest offering is the follow up to last year’s The Bedlam In Goliath, which told the tales of disasters and weird Tutankhamun happenings which were all a result of this ouija board they picked up in Jerusalem.

Now, with this in mind, I was expecting an album to be littered with stories and mystery that this band is famed for delivering time after time. However, despite their being a lack of ‘storytelling’ on this album, Cedric Bixler-Zavala said: "It's more mellow. It's a little more of what we consider our 'acoustic' side."

To be honest, this is about as acoustic as an experimental can get, opening with silence which slowly creeps into the land of weeping guitars and gut-wrenching vocals.

Of course, when you first see that there are eight songs on here, you might think, oh, that’s a pretty short album… but oh no, six of them are well over five minutes long, and it’s six minutes of calm, tranquil, almost utterly bizarre music.


Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m not a fan, because it’s quite an enjoyable album to listen to as I try (and fail) to motivate me to do anything other than constantly press F5 on Facebook all day, but it’s not really something I’d advise someone after a bit of a ‘uplift’ to whack on their CD player anytime soon.

Unfortunately whilst ‘Octahedron’ as a whole is passably interesting, it fails to reach the levels of musical experimentation we’ve come to expect from this band, although their leaning to a more ’mellow’ direction does add a refreshing change, it would be nicer to have seen a bit more of the sparkle we know and love from these guys.

FemaleFirst - Ruth Harrison

Previous Mars Volta albums have afforded rare insights into the world of the gold prospector, listeners often having to sift through rivers of free-form jazz in order to find nuggets of rock.

Octahedron bucks the band's trend for obfuscation, though; conventional song structures are very much in evidence, while it's relatively trim 49-minute running time is on a par with some of Mars Volta's more involved live jams.

There is, of course, a loose concept - kidnappings, disappearances and the like feature heavily throughout - but the stunning Halo of Nembutals is the closest Mars Volta have yet come to combining the hard-rocking bombast of Led Zeppelin with the bravura of Santana.

3 stars out of 5.
[Good within it's field, but perhaps not for everyone]

Recommended download: Halo of Nembutals, Cotopaxi (Q50)
[Q50 indicates one of the top 50 tracks this month]

The Mars Volta
Octahedron
Universal

4

El Grupo Nuevo De Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
Cryptomnesia
Universal
7
Il ragazzo è logorroioco, è chiaro. Taciturno di persona ma senza limiti di sorta quando suona, testimone una produzione discografica ormai gonfiatasi all’inverosimile: tenendosi sui titoli essenziali, siamo al quinto album dei Mars Volta e intorno all’undicesimo solista. Octahedron è il “disco acustico” del quale Omar e soci avevano parlato tempo fa, e anche se la definizione non va presa alla lettera – si tratta pur sempre dei Mars Volta – è certo una sterzata decisa verso cose più dolci, melodiche e legate alla forma-canzone. Che per un minuto o due suonano tipo Led Zeppelin acustici virati prog, ma subito scadono in paccottiglia epica di scarsissimo valore. Che fatta da altri non sarebbe probabilmente nemmeno recensita. Cryptomnesia è invece realizzato con l’aiuto di due Mars Volta (Cedric Bixler, Juan Alderete) e due Hella (Zach Hill, Jonathan Hischke). Prima parte di una trilogia, e figuriamoci, pare una versione più fresca e sostenibile della band madre. La benvenuta, fra gomitoli di psichedelia progressiva, isterie hard improvvise, tempi e cambi impossibili.
Andrea Pomini

"For a band that experiments with glossolalia and pig scalps, the Mars Volta open their latest with a rather straightforward image. "Do you remember how you wore that dress?" sings Cedric Bixler-Zavala in "Since We've Been Wrong," a mostly acoustic prog-soul tune that's totally hummable. It sets the tone for an LP haunted by heartbreak and more focused on soulful vocal emoting than on cool time signatures and guitar flip-outs. But Bixler-Zavala is no Maxwell; he's more about sharp pain than voluptuous ache. By the end, he invokes Gordian knots alongside a fractallike Omar Rodriguez-Lopez guitar solo. Dude sounds like he's back home again."

June 25, 2009 issue

Mars Volta: Octahedron
Tuesday, 16 Jun 2009 12:39
Mars Volta release their chilled-out fifth album Octahedron Printer friendly version

Music reviews archive... Mercury, out June 22nd.

In a nutshell...

Esoteric, psychedelic, experimental, yet relaxed and accessible

What's it all about?

Octahedron is the fifth studio record in six years from the Mars Volta and sees the group eschew grand concept albums and instead focus on channelling their creativity into eight bluesy numbers which all stay on the right side of the ten-minute mark. Not only does the album title mirror the number of tracks, but there is a discernible method to this madness, which is more than can be said for some of the band’s previous indulgences. There is enough flamboyance to appease hardcore fans, but newcomers will be drawn in by the lilting melodies of With Twilight As My Guide and the swaggering rock of Teflon.

Who's it by?

It's hard to know where to start trying to explain the Mars Volta, but that's partly the point of this sprawling prog-rock monolith. The brainchild of former At The Drive-In members Omar Rodriguez Lopez (guitar and producer) and Cedric Bixler Zavala (vocals and lyrics), the Mars Volta have consistently proved themselves to be one of the most enigmatic bands of the 21st century, producing labyrinthine records held together by epic concepts. For example, 2008's The Bedlam in Goliath was about finding a Ouija Board and burying it in the desert. Eight-minute tracks are more of a norm than an exception and several mind-bending solos from Red Hot Chili Pepper John Frusciante are thrown in for good measure.

As an example...

"How could you turn your back on me?/ I've summoned the stampede of infidel feet/For all I ever wanted is all you ever flaunted." – Halo Of Nembutals

Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys

The bombastic riffery of Cotopaxi may prove to be a strong single, but the Mars Volta have never been too concerned about such frippery. Their inclusion on Guitar Hero: World Tour has no doubt swelled their fan base in much the same way as Guitar Hero III did for fellow prog pioneers Dragonforce, and this may have influenced their decision to release a more accessible record. Octahedron looks set to help them reach beyond their cult-like following and critical acclaim will be widespread and enthusiastic.

What the others say

"These eight tracks make up the Mars Volta's most consistently compelling slab since 2005's salsafied Frances the Mute. But make no mistake: Rodriguez-Lopez still favours 12 solos where one will do." – Spin

"As intoxicating as they are infuriating, the Mars Volta flow between Latin flavoured jazz-fusion and tight, muscular rock." – Guardian

So is it any good?

Resisting the lures of obscure noodling is a talent that the band seems to be perfecting and there is a fine balance struck here between the esoteric moments of experimentation and the overall structure of the record. Octahedron is a slightly more restrained affair than usual, with opener Since We've Been Wrong lulling the listener into a false sense of predictability.

In lieu of a concept, Rodriguez-Lopez has described this as the band's acoustic album, and whilst this is hardly a Travis record, the overall tone is much more relaxed than on any other Mars Volta record. The rhythms are less syncopated, but the melodies are still as haunting and eerie as always, with Bixler-Zavala's unique voice guiding you through this aural maze, often doubling up in echoing harmonies.

Octahedron is the most approachable record that the band has produced since their 2003 debut De-Loused In The Comatorium, and their restraint has resulted in a fulfilling and highly colourful listen.

8/10

Chris Jefferies

"Interstellar Overdrive"
With their self-described "acoustic album," prog-rock psychonauts The Mars Volta dial back the amps--and just about nothing else.

The Mars Volta
Octahedron (Warner Bros.)
3/5 stars

Even before 2008's The Bedlam in Goliath hit the streets, Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez was telling interviewers that the neo-prog rockers' fifth studio record would be "our acoustic album." For most bands, such a distinction would entail lots of campfire-style strumming and plodding tempos topped with copious emoting, all conceived in an atmosphere so precious you can practically smell the burning joss sticks. But in the case of Octahedron, well...let's just say that you won't find a whole lot of kumbayas on here.

Since 2001, when Rodriguez-Lopez and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala waltzed their girl jeans-clad asses out of At the Drive-In, The Mars Volta have always been unrepentantly single-minded in their pursuit and creation of challenging music. Like Mastodon, a band with similarly progressive (though far more metallic) leanings, the Mars Volta have somehow managed to become more popular even as their records have gotten weirder--as exemplified by the band's Grammy win for "Wax Simulacra," a song from an album (Bedlam) allegedly based on a run-in with a malevolent spirit unleashed by a Ouija board.

While there doesn't appear, at least at first glance, to be any kind of convoluted lyrical concept at the heart of Octahedron--the album title may simply refer to the fact that there are eight songs on this 49-minute opus--there's still plenty of challenging music and insular lyrics in the mix. The glacial opener, "Since We've Been Wrong," throws any initial "acoustic album" preconceptions out the window on the wings of some searing electric guitar sustain, though it does take a good five minutes before the drums actually kick in. The song's aching melody meshes perfectly with Bixler-Zavala's introverted promise to "find a way out through those eyelids," as well as the track's melancholy air of alienation and resignation. As Bixler-Zavala muses at one point, "I seem to feel like I don't belong here." [sic]

There's a similar lost-in-space vibe at work on "With Twilight as My Guide" and "Copernicus," both of which use ominously plucked arpeggios, stately keyboards, and echo-drenched electric leads to create an almost Pink Floydian effect. Bixler-Zavala's high pitched vocal stylings--which generally make Geddy Lee sound like Phil Anselmo--are actually quite beguiling in this particular atmospheric context. Far tougher to take are his overwrought performances on harder rocking tracks like "Halo of Nembutals," the Led Zep-ified "Cotopaxi," and the eight-minute closer "Luciforms." Not only do they distract from the band's impressive interplay but they occasionally even make Rodriguez-Lopez's wicked guitar freakouts sound soothing by comparison.

Then again, musical excess has always been an integral part of the Mars Volta experience, and if rampant self-indulgence doesn't sound like your kind of good time, Octahedron isn't going to be the record that converts you to the cause. But Mars Volta diehards--as well as prog rock fans who enjoy a bit of space travel mixed in with their mind-boggling blasts of technical proficiency--will find much to love.

- Dan Epstein

A few disarming moments on “Octahedron” unfold slowly, with pockets of space and calm. Don’t be lured into trusting them. This album, the fifth studio release by the Mars Volta, employs stillness as a setup for all manner of disruption: sharply pealing riffs, phantasmagorical metaphors, convoluted song structures. In many ways it’s a typical effort from the guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and the vocalist Cedric Bixler Zavala, who make up the Mars Volta’s cunning and ever-agitated core.

But that’s not to discredit the more measured side of “Octahedron,” a harbor for some of this psychedelic prog-rock band’s most alluring melodies and among its most coherent recordings. Presented as an eight-song suite, the album delivers a panoramic range of intensity, sliding along that range in ways both gradual and startling. So a brooding tune like “With Twilight as My Guide” can swell and then ebb almost to the lulling point before the next tune, “Cotopaxi,” arrives with whiplash force.

As a lyricist Mr. Bixler Zavala still favors the enigmatic and ominous, with the haziest of interpersonal connotations. Aside from the opener, a remorseful ballad called “Since We’ve Been Wrong,” the songs fix their uneasy sentiments to unsettling images, like carcasses or “tables of ringworms.” The syntax can suggest an antiquarian contortion: “With qualms that I speak/Of the wrists I have cut,” he sings at the start of “Desperate Graves.”

But the panache of the singing, and the radiant complexity of the music — an achievement shared by Mr. Rodriguez Lopez and a handful of regular collaborators, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante — drive the album relentlessly forward. And it’s the subtle touches, no less than the sweeping ones, that leave an impression.

-NATE CHINEN

Octahedron
The Mars Volta
Octahedron
[Warner Bros.; 2009]
6.0


Look, here's the deal: If you don't know what you're getting into with a new Mars Volta record at this point, after seven years and five albums (plus one EP and a live thing or two), then my advice is to go directly to full-length numero uno, 2003's De-Loused in the Comatorium. Sample its rhythmic-centric, post-emo art-rock, and decide if you need to continue through the band's catalog. It only gets less user-friendly from there.

Because (speaking to the first-time listeners) "rhythm-centric" here doesn't mean anything remotely funky. It means the frantic, percussion-heavy, multiple-tempo-shifts-per-song brand of complexity inaugurated by batshit 70s-era theatrical hard rock. Also, the band's allegiance to jazz-fusion titans, ones not averse to fuzz and a low-end, means things get far...looser from album number two onward. Arena-grade heavy metal thunder abruptly melts into a groovily aimless journey for congas and electric organ. Repeatedly. Immodestly virtuosic and never afraid to run with a jam, the Mars Volta's ability to alienate newcomers is well-documented. Which means this review is probably for those not already-- or instantly, after their first listen-- alienated.

Is Octahedron the band's best album? No, but if you dig on MV's unrepentantly "big" and meandering suite-driven concept-album thing, you won't necessarily be disappointed. And with songs that only once stray past the eight-minute mark, it's the most accessible MV album since the first. Slower, with fewer breakdowns or out-of-nowhere segues into a wholly new song, it's kind of a Cliffs Notes of everything the band does well, ditching much of the attention-straining stuff. For instance, the hallucinogen-friendly stretches, where glassily effected guitars ping and peal at lava-lamp tempo, have been pruned. (Okay, with a few exceptions.) Even the longest songs stick to something like a coherent mood and linear structure.

Sometimes they even straight-up rock. "Cotopaxi" is perhaps the tersest, most jagged song Omar Rodriguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala have cut since At the Drive-In imploded, a boogie riff nodding to their Texan origins, violently cut up and reassembled with virtuoso care. "Desperate Graves" actually builds, rather than dropping a big loud bomb after a placid bit of introductory strumming, and comes with the closest thing the band's written to an instantly memorable chorus in quite a while. Even the breakdown is short and to the point.

This being the Mars Volta, however, it wouldn't do for the album to be entirely curveball-free. For instance, Autechre-style electronic hisses and bristling beats bubble up in the latter half off "Copernicus", mostly without getting all show-offy about it. There's also the general slow and steady downtempo-- or plain downer-- feel to many of the songs. For a band so often pilloried for being too agitated to ride out a good riff, it's probably the closest the Mars Volta will ever come to a cop for the slow jam kids. And it's hard to deny that, depending on your taste for jamming, if you've ever dug on acid-spitting wank-solos over endless, thunderous drum rolls, the final minutes of album closer "Luciforms" is pretty much the shit from a shameless climax standpoint.

As for Rodriguez-López' lyrics, well, sure, they still often verge on the eye-rolling if you're not going to meet him halfway. I'm not going to pretend that a line like, "My devil makes me dream/ Like no other mortal dreams" comes off to me as anything but camp/kitsch. And "don't stop dragging the lake" (from "Cotopaxi") isn't really an earworm as far as hooks go. Now I don't mean to dismiss the words' possible import. It's been clear from album one that the lyrics have a deep resonance for the band, and are meant as clues for the kind of fanbase who enjoys treating records as narratives with big gaps waiting to be filled with a little online research/interview legwork/guesswork. While I'm so not that guy, I will just say the melodrama-rich, scrambled poetry-notebook puzzle pieces do "work" in the context of the album's overall sound. So does the Hammer horror flick sound of Rodriguez-López's tortured-castrato vocals. When his full-tilt shriek joins the band at a moment of total commotion, you can easily imagine the planetarium-scale mock grandeur of it all.

The Mars Volta feeds some very specific needs in its fanbase. There's a certain kind of listener that, maybe once a year or maybe every day, wants music that sates the same impulse that makes people gorge on spectacle-scale cinema or devour the entire Dune series in a few weeks. The Mars Volta's specific brand of bombast may remain an untranslatable language for those rooted in a DIY-scaled world, or committed to the shiny three-minutes-and-change tidiness of the charts. But if you're fiending for the musical equivalent of an epic, partially incoherent battle between good and evil in IMAX 3D, you could do a lot worse.

— Jess Harvell, June 30, 2009