The Drive in

Japanese edition with bonus track.
The Mars Volta have never taken the easy route. Their sixth album since Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala quit seminal post-hardcore outfit At The Drive-In in 2001, ‘Noctourniquet’ is framed around a narrative based both on Superman villain Solomon Grundy and the Greek myth of Hyacinthus. If you need refreshing, that’s the one in which Hyacinth, the (male) lover of the god Apollo, attempts to impress Apollo by catching his discus, but gets struck by it and dies. The music follows the same recondite, abstruse path as the lyrics - an ambitious, avant-garde swirl of prog, rock, post-rock and quasi-metal that carries the weight of such intense cerebral pressure…

Released on the heels of the stilted, static Cahoots, the double-album Rock of Ages occupies a curious yet important place in Band history. Recorded at a spectacular New Years Eve 1971 gig, the show and album were intended to be a farewell of sorts before the Band took an extended break in 1972, but it turned out to be a last hurrah in many different ways, closing the chapter on the first stage of their career, when they were among the biggest and most important rock & roll bands. That sense of importance had started to creep into their music, turning their studio albums after The Band into self-conscious affairs, and even the wildly acclaimed first two albums seemed to float out of time, existing in a sphere of their own and never having the kick of a rock & roll band.

When Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala silenced At the Drive-In in the midst of its popular emergence, there was no question that the two artists would return with new music as exciting as their previous band. However, there was plenty of discussion in corners and over drinks about what, exactly, that music would sound like. It was clear that much more was happening under those Afros than biting, post-hardcore anthemics laced with psychedelia. In 2002, Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala returned with the single "Tremulant," attributed to their new project, the Mars Volta. Its shifting soundscapes were certainly a hint, but with the Mars Volta's ambitious De-Loused in the Comatorium, it's clear the ATDI expats' mushroom-headed hairstyles hide bulging brains that pulsate with ideas, influences, and a fever-pitch desire to take music forward, even if they're occasionally led too far afield for the audience to follow…

Breaking a decade of omertà, The Mars Volta reawaken from their lengthy hiatus with an eponymous album that radically reshapes their paradigm. Formed by guitarist/composer Omar Rodríguez-López and singer/lyricist Cedric Bixler-Zavala, The Mars Volta rose from the ashes of El Paso punk-rock firebrands At The Drive-In in 2001. On a mission to “honour our roots and honour our dead”, The Mars Volta made music that fused the Latin sounds Rodríguez-López was raised on with the punk and underground noise he and Bixler-Zavala had immersed themselves in for years, and the futuristic visions they were tapping into.

When At the Drive-In decapitated itself, it basically split a whole into two halves; the Mars Volta took up the more ethereal, spacy, and experimental one. This project seems to pretty much abandon the nearly radio-friendly station they had previously taken up with Relationship of Command by creating an epic-length masterpiece of quirky, spacious sound rather than the more upfront rock aspects (the half of which is now embodied in the other ATDI offshoot band, Sparta). With Tremulant, the Mars Volta threaten to outdo the sizzling body of work of their past lives with the creation of something seething and timeless, melding their more beautiful and transcendent styles with rhythmic battery and shimmering gloss. Cedric's vocals mesmerize, as always, backed with the odd lust of Omar's melody and the powerhouse rhythm section and keys.

The original version of the album In Heat as it was intended to sound. The Fuzztones have been around for over 30 years as a garage rock revival band. Though originally from New York City, they work mainly in Europe where their brand of retro 60 trash rock burns up radios from Hungary to Poland to Italy. The original In Heat was released in 1989 at the peak of the garage revival, when bands like the Chesterfield Kings, Lyres, and Cynics were all the rage. Unsurprising, the music industry turned a blind eye, yet miraculously The Fuzztones signed a major label deal with RCA. Label politics had the band in a "real" studio with a "name" producer who watered down their unharnessed energy and snotty attitude. In the end the original disc was a second rate affair with most of the grit rubbed out only to die a sad, quick death at the hands of critics who never appreciated the band’s live act anyway. Raw Heat therefore turns the clock back in time when garage rock rivaled punk as the most exciting musical scene to come along in decades.