#2 Seller of 2005! The Mars Volta is neither a concept album band nor a prog band. Sure, they excel at both, but Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala formed the Mars Volta to dispose of labels and limitations of any kind, to move beyond. The Mars Volta's Frances The Mute is NOT a "sequel" to 2003's De-Loused In The Comatorium. Yes it builds a story around the memory of a dear departed friend--but the similarities end there. Where De-Loused... was a finite sci-fi narrative that    [ read more ]

CD $14.99

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A fully realized concept album inspired by the suicide of a close friend of Mars Volta founders Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavalas, "De-Loused in the Comatorium"'s narrative consists of fantastic worlds and adventures that Cedric imagines the friend experiencing while in a coma following an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Although the story ends tragically, the creators insist that this is a celebration of the adventurous and daring life that their friend lived. On this record, The Mar   [ read more ]

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The Mars Volta returns with a fresh dose of epic rock n' roll on its third studio album, Amputechture. The eight-track set is due September 12th via Universal and opens with the seven-minute "Vicarious Atonement," the closest the group has ever come to a ballad. The album then moves back to familiar expansive musical territory on the nearly 17-minute "Tetragrammaton," and also features two other tracks that clock in past the 11-minute mark, "Meccamputechture" and "Day of the Baphomets." The disc itse   [ read more ]

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#24 Seller of 2005! These red-hot prog rockers are back with an impressive live album packed with over 70 minutes of exhilarating live prog-metal madness. "Daltrey and Townsend, Page and Plant - it was impossible to watch Cedric Bixler Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez in action and not think such grandiose thoughts." - Time Out New York TRACKLIST: 'Abrasions Mount the Timpani' / 'Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt' / 'a) Gust of Mutts' / 'b) and Ghosted Pouts' / 'Caviglia' / 'Concertina' / 'Haruspex' / 'Cicatriz' / '   [ read more ]

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The genesis of The Mars Volta's new album The Bedlam in Goliath is one of the weirdest stories in the history of modern music, a tale of long-buried murder victims and their otherworldly influence, of strife and near collapse, of the long hard fight to push "the record that did not want to be born" out into the world. Omar was in a curio shop in Jerusalem when he found the Soothsayer. It seemed to him an ideal gift for Cedric, this archaic Ouija-style "talking board." So it was then and there,    [ read more ]

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Hailed by The New Yorker as "perhaps the most musically adventurous act currently signed to a major label" and by Rolling Stone as 2008's Best Prog-Rock Band, The Mars Volta makes its Warner Bros. debut with Octahedron, the highly acclaimed group's fifth studio album. Following 2008's The Bedlam In Goliath - its third consecutive album to debut Top 10 - which featured "Wax Simulacra," Grammy winner for Best Hard Rock Performance, The Mars Volta's punkperverted neo-psychedelia goes    [ read more ]

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The Mars Volta are continual contenders for the mantle of most experimental high-profile metal group, along with System of a Down, an artist they've toured with but who usually sell 20 times more records. Mars Volta aren't as popular, not because their riffs are less memorable or innovative but because their cycle of musical buildup and release, although similarly jarring, can last at least 20 minutes instead of System's two. (It's the difference between having a background in acid rock an   [ read more ]

CD $48.43

The Mars Volta are continual contenders for the mantle of most experimental high-profile metal group, along with System of a Down, an artist they've toured with but who usually sell 20 times more records. Mars Volta aren't as popular, not because their riffs are less memorable or innovative but because their cycle of musical buildup and release, although similarly jarring, can last at least 20 minutes instead of System's two. (It's the difference between having a background in acid rock an   [ read more ]

CD $25.63

It can't come as a surprise that the Mars Volta's fourth album opens with a bang -- sonic terrorism is one of the only things listeners can count on from the band -- but it's genuinely novel that The Bedlam in Goliath never lets go of its momentum, not even after a full hour's worth of unrelenting war on silence, the wrapping paper for a concept album about the power of the occult. On their first three proper albums, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez played games of quiet-loud   [ read more ]

CD $43.68

The Mars Volta's 2003 debut was a dense, experimental run-on sentence of science fiction and musical exploration. But though it ultimately rewarded patience with stretches of unbuckled rock & roll genius, De-Loused in the Comatorium was also a maze-like and obtuse migraine dealer that made people frustrated and crazy. For 2005's Frances the Mute, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala worked principally with their touring band, but "joining the band for selected moments" are strings   [ read more ]

CD $48.43

It can't come as a surprise that the Mars Volta's fourth album opens with a bang -- sonic terrorism is one of the only things listeners can count on from the band -- but it's genuinely novel that The Bedlam in Goliath never lets go of its momentum, not even after a full hour's worth of unrelenting war on silence, the wrapping paper for a concept album about the power of the occult. On their first three proper albums, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez played games of quiet-loud   [ read more ]

CD $32.28

Scab Dates' accompanying photography is a frenetic blur of instruments and sweaty hair. Singers stand on amplifiers, and keyboardists stare intently at the veins popping in their hands; drummers reach over snares to tweak guitar strings, and saxophones appear out of the ether. It's an accurate portrayal of the Mars Volta's collagist sound, their subtitled and bullet-pointed avant metal that increasingly seems like the soundtrack to a film only Omar Rodriguez-Lopez can see. Still, even at thei   [ read more ]

CD $48.43