The Mars Volta
De-Loused in the Comatorium
6.3
Well, my first review for this Metal Review site is not metal. Serves me right. So what is it, then? That's not easy to answer. It's a mixture of great musicianship, good songwriting, annoying "jams," and a bit too much exploration. Finding a comparison is hard as well, but if you took Geddy Lee from Rush and gave him more of a post 90's avant-college vibe, placed him in some kind of cross between Yes and Porcupine Tree, with a bit of Santana and Pink Floyd . . . sound confusing? There is also the occasional early David Bowie . . . and what the hell - Supertramp. And you know - it works, sometimes. There are really good songs in here, and when the band plays them bright and straightforward, you can easily find yourself pulled in. The problem is that the band does not always play the songs straightforward, at least not often enough. They are given to "exploring" for long stretches in the middle of their tunes, going off on little sound tangents that don't add anything to the music, make you kind of itchy to fast forward, and can completely remove you from the song. When I say long stretches, I mean the songs can last up to 12 minutes, of which a good quarter can be plinking and echoes. Plus, they do seem to love the idea of backward masking. Unfortunately, it's not '72, and I am not stoned. It should be noted than the tenor voiced singer (ex-At the Drive in vocalist Cedric Bixler) is VERY tenor voiced and clean, like Queen's Roger Taylor (for those of you who aren't up on your Queen stats, Roger Taylor was the drummer and occasional singer; if you listen to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, I believe it's his falsetto singing "Galileo.."). Bixler’s voice is very high, very natural, and without too much reliance on vibrato. It sounds pretty good for what it is, but if you don't like high pitched singing, you will not like this guy. The guitars are not metallic in the least, nor are they heavy. However, they do what they are supposed to do just fine. In fact, all the musicians in this group can fucking PLAY (including guitarist Omar Rodriguez, also ex-At the Drive In), and do so with abandon. It's hard to bottom line this record. I can tell you I am enjoying it, but I will not play it very often. It seems like it will be a nice way to clean out the aural blood clots left over from my usual listening choices. It should fit in nicely with the above mentioned Porcupine Tree and bands like Failure as something different, non-metal but still interesting, well played, and enjoyable. The meandering stretches of noise and "jam" will keep it from surfacing too often but if you are on the lookout for something besides metal, you could do worse.
