Recensioni, per quando arriveranno

The Mars Volta - Amputechture
Review by: Stephen McMahon
July 17, 2006, 11:51 pm


Tracklisting

Vicarious Atonement
Tetragrammaton
Vermicide
Meccamputechture
Asilos Magdalena
Viscera Eyes
Day of the Baphomets
El Ciervo Vulnerado
Released:
08/15/2006

Record Label:
Universal Records
Knowing that this album came from the same guys that brought you Relationship and Command terrifies me. Knowing that this album came from the same guys that brought you De-Loused in the Comatorium makes me want to vomit.

It’s hard to write about such a unique, absurd band. To have to jot down what I feel about this album is incomprehensible. I’m at such a loss for words (edit: never mind I realized how much I loathed this album after hearing the second track and beyond) as to what to write about their latest album. My first thoughts after hearing Amputechture were something along the lines of “Is this Frances the Mute?” and then finally, “Where are the other CDs I need to review?”

I laid in bed, put Amputechture in my CD player, put my headphones on, and as instantaneously as I was pulled into the CD by the first song, “Vicarious Atonement”, I was just as swiftly thrown back out by the second song. I was bored already. I’d prefer listening to a playlist with every God-awful version of “Just Like Heaven”, ranging from Dinosaur Jr. to Goldfinger. Yes, that’s right I said it. Like the rest of the Mars Volta albums, it took me about 20 different listens to finally become immersed in the album.

Amputechture opens with “Vicarious Atonement”, which I think was a step forward in their music. Lingering guitars, haunting vocals, perfect echoes, and nice utilization of surround sound gave me high hopes for this album, hopes which were trampled as soon as I heard the next track, “Tetragrammaton.” “Tetragrammaton” just reminds me of “Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore” (off of Frances the Mute), as does the majority of the rest of Amputechture. The only other stand-out song on the album, and by stand-out I mean the only one that doesn’t sound so much like it came off a past album, is “Viscera Eyes.” “Viscera Eyes” reminds me of an extended version of “Cassandra Geminni” (Frances the Mute). "Viscera Eyes" builds into a repetitive guitar and bass riff with pursuing drums, followed by Spanish-to-English vocals. If I can decipher his Geddy Lee-like screaming, it sounds like it goes back into Spanish again. Aside from that, though, it was instrumentally enjoyable. (Not Explosions in the Sky enjoyable, or This Will Destroy You enjoyable but, “wow-this-is-better-than-the-rest-of-the-CD's-instrumentation”-enjoyable.) The seventh track off Amputechture, “Day of the Baphoments”, utilizes a sound that I have yet to hear on any of the Mars Volta albums, showing that they did do a few innovative things on this album. Towards the end of the song it sounds as if the members of STOMP came in to give them a demo of their urban musical gifts, beating on trashcans and bottles (9:50 into the song). All jokes aside, the miniature “breakdown” they had with those instruments was entirely out of place and irrelevant to the rest of the song. The word “typical” springs to mind when I think of this album, and it could have been better if it wasn’t for the 15+ minutes of “unnecessary shredding time” on the guitars, wind chimes, keyboard, STOMP instruments, et cetera.

Don’t get me wrong: the Mars Volta albums have always excited me, since the majority of their releases have been innovative and appealing. Yet the Mars Volta haven’t done anything new with this album. I’m still an enormous admirer of De-Loused in the Comatorium, and of the Mars Volta in general, but I hear the same sound effects and instrumental notes, the same high-pitched vocals, as their precedent albums. Amputechture is a respectable album for a first-time listener, but for long-time listeners there is nothing exhilarating and nothing revolutionary that has come out of this album. It just reminds us of the same CD they burned out on when Frances the Mute came out. If The Mars Volta could just run with the psychedelic rock, blues, jazz, ambient, jam band, progressive rock, whateverthehellyouwanttocallit sound it occasionally toys with and mixed it up, I imagine we could effortlessly see one of the most popular albums of the year. This, however, is not that album, and is what I consider to be an overall expansion of Frances the Mute.