The Mars Volta

About

The Mars Volta is the seventh studio album by American progressive rock band the Mars Volta, released through Clouds Hill on September 16, 2022. Produced by guitarist, songwriter and musical director Omar Rodríguez-López, the album was preceded by the singles "Blacklight Shine", "Graveyard Love" and "Vigil". Self-titled to mark a "clean slate" in the band's history, it is the band's first studio album in over ten year, following their 2012 album, Noctourniquet, and subsequent break-up. After reuniting in secret in 2019, band leaders Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala made a conscious effort to break from their previous progressive rock sound and record a pop-influenced album, with Bixler-Zavala directly addressing his family's recent struggles with the Church of Scientology in his lyric. The band will tour North America from September 2022 in support of the record. Background In late 2012, following the release of the Mars Volta's sixth studio album, Noctourniquet, core members Cedric Bixler-Zavala (vocals) and Omar Rodríguez-López (guitar, production) disbanded the group after a falling out between the pair. Writing on his personal Twitter account in early 2013, Bixler-Zavala stated: "I can’t sit here and pretend any more. I no longer am a member of Mars Volta. For the record I tried my hardest to get a full scale North American tour going for Noctourniquet but Omar did not want to." Reflecting on this in 2022, Bixler-Zavala noted: "I was in a really impatient place when I left the band, very immaturely, in a loud way on social media. It was just sort of being a brat." At this time, Bixler-Zavala had joined the Church of Scientology, creating tension between himself and Rodríguez-López and resulting in the pair growing apart. Within two years of the falling-out, the pair had reconciled, subsequently forming the supergroup Antemasque and working on the At the Drive-In album, In•ter a•li•a (2017), before regrouping as the Mars Volta in secret in 2019. Remarking on the differences between At the Drive-In and the Mars Volta, Rodríguez-López noted: "The At the Drive-In thing was a very finite thing. It was partly nostalgia and the past, and where we come from and our root. There’s a certain expectation and a certain thing that you have to give there, and the parameters are very much set. With the Mars Volta, it always goes back to the idea of, ‘Is it exciting, does it move me? Is what I’m hearing coming back out of the speakers just something that makes me dance?’" A press release for the album stated that the album contains only "two tracks longer than four minutes", marking a shift away from the band's progressive rock sound and into sonic territory marked by "more subtle touches and Caribbean rhythms". The same press release also read that the band are at their "most mature, most concise, most focused" on the album. Recording Upon reuniting the Mars Volta in secret in 2019, Rodríguez-López made a conscious decision not to return to the band's progressive rock sound on any new recording. This wa, in part, influenced by his and Bixler-Zavala's continued work with At the Drive-In between 2016 and 2018: "Being on tour with At the Drive-In for three year, playing way faster than we even do in Mars Volta and more aggressively, you know, it's all the same frequencie, right? Two guitar, the cymbals and Cedric's voice are all in the same frequency, fighting all night long, every day. With the exhaustion of the tour, I just started making track, and as I was saturated with this other thing, I wanted to do something else. For me, the most exciting new direction is something we haven't done: to cut things down, to do our version of pop." The majority of Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López's collaborations were recorded over a ten-day period, at a Los Angeles house that Rodríguez-López had rented. Rodríguez-López arrived at the sessions with up to 48 song idea, with Bixler-Zavala writing and recording quickly to the material he responded to the most. Rodríguez-López noted: "I'm just looking for whatever he reacts to naturally. Those things stay true to the end." Writing and composition Writing melodies in keeping with guitarist and musical director Rodríguez-López's pop-based aesthetic, vocalist and lyricist Bixler-Zavala was influenced by David Bowie, Phill Collin, Peter Gabriel and Paul Weller, whose careers often transitioned from experimental work to mainstream success: "I'm looking for that gray area where it's just starting to be pop, but their old selves are still there." On Weller's influence in particular, Bixler-Zavala described The Mars Volta as the band's "Style Council moment", referring to Weller's decision to pivot genres following the break-up of The Jam: "Quite frankly, a lot of (fans of The Jam) needed to have the Style Council put in front of them, just to show them that you can't be stuck in a genre. It becomes cosplay after a certain time, people start dressing like you, the cover bands come out, the bands who don't understand influence and just make carbon copies then start being praised. You have to reinvent shit, and embrace things your fans didn't think you would embrace." Bixler-Zavala's lyrics were directly influenced by his wife Chrissie Carnell Bixler's legal battles with the actor Danny Masterson and the Church of Scientology, with Carnell Bixler and three other women accusing Masterson of rape and the Church of Scientology with "stalking, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress". In fear of repercussions and tampering by the Church of Scientology, Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López sent their in-progress songs to one another via CDs rather than using cloud storage. As a result of the personal subject matter and overall shift in musical style, Bixler-Zavala consciously wrote lyrics that were less cryptic than the band's previous material: "In these song, there are more direct expressions of what you're supposed to be feeling. On a lot of other Mars Volta record, you'll have that every once in a while. But more often you'll have this total sci-fi riddle. Now I'm speaking about just the things that are happening." Prior to the release of the band's 2009 album, Octahedron, both Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala suggested that that album was their first "pop" release, with Bixler-Zavala noting at the time: "We wanted to make the opposite of all the records we've done. All along we've threatened people that we'd make a pop record, and now we have." Reflecting on what they considered "pop" at that time and his resistance to writing songs within the genre, Bixler-Zavala noted: "At the time I couldn't have that conversation, because I was so stuck in whatever sort of genre where we were pigeonholed a. I was so comfortable, and I was so used to making very long songs and having them be labyrinth-like and all that kind of stuff. And I just couldn't get my head around it." Rodríguez-López elaborated: "We've been warning you guy, we were saying ten years ago that the most revolutionary thing we could do was make a pop record. We're in our mid-to-late 40s and you can't just still be doing the same shit, expecting to wear an old t-shirt that doesn't fit any more." .

via Last.fm

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