When Mars Volta member Jeremy Ward died shortly before the release of their debut album, some heartlessly snickered about the relevance of a "sound manipulator" passing on. After all, it's not like the guy was playing a guitar or bass, right? But after forging numerous times through the dense De-Loused in the Comatorium, the severity of the loss screams blatantly; The Mars Volta focus most of their energy on sound manipulation. Watery vocals, phased synths, reverbed guitars, reversed bongos, and countless other dub twiddlings drench each busy, triathlon-long song.
Ward is the second person close to The Mars Volta who has died. Julio Venegas, a close friend of the band's, committed suicide in 1996, and as the media has repeatedly pointed out, De-Loused in the Comatorium is supposed to be a chronicle of his life and death. This is a monumental case of the media blindly reviewing off their press kits-- there's absolutely no way of gleaning this story/idea/topic/concept/whatever in the hilariously awful, sub-Burroughs, refrigerator-magnet montage of dark PSAT words that make up this album.
The song titles-- "Drunkship of Lanterns", "Televators", "Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt"-- merely hint at Comatorium's purblind "poetry." Follow Venegas' footsteps as he makes his "ritual contrition asphyxiation half mast commute through umbilical blisters and boxcar cadavers!"* Weep while he's "rowing shit smells for the dead"* before the "pinkeye fountain"* and "three half-eaten corneas!"* At least I think that's what happened.
The only sensible summation of Venegas' demise seems to be that he proclaimed, "Now I'm lost," then "searched" for "something" for a "long time," then cried "Is anybody there," and finally "took" the ol' "veil cerpin taxt." Huh. Reprinting these lyrics in the liner notes might have helped to clarify the story, but that could as easily have ruined the experience-- dissecting the cryptic babble is half (or more) of the fun. These lyrics, like At the Drive In's before them, are pure stream-of-consciousness. Only now they're delivered in a Geddy Lee castrato, treading helplessly in a tumultuous Great Lake of unplotted neo-prog.
"Inertiatic ESP", Comatorium's first real song, stands out as the only memorable track, probably due to its succinct, 4\xBD-minute runtime. Afterward, every song follows a pattern: roar out of the gate with the main riff, stop suddenly, float in reverby space where one can hear the smoke machines and laser shows, bring back the opening riff with added guitars noodling away, slurp up the noise in a sucking sound, hit the pachanga 'n' guitar solo movement, slowly fade in a swarm of dub effects, and, BAM, repeat step one. Think of a San Diego hardcore band. Think of ALL of the San Diego hardcore bands at once whipping through ELP's "Karn Evil 9" without practice.
The Mars Volta mistake sonic piling for complex architecture. No melodic themes are carried. Often you'll find yourself lost in a epic passage of dripping noises ("Cicatrix ESP") or a robotic bleepdown ("Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt") where the song even forgets itself, before the opening riff and chorus blare back in an "oh, right, this one" kind of way. Even acoustic interludes, like the one during the opening of "This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed", can't pass without Amazon bird recordings and distant e-bow.
Rick Rubin has produced masterfully before-- from the surging density of Slayer's Reign in Blood, to the clean funk of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik, to the crisp acoustics of Johnny Cash's American recordings. Here, he's been asked to mix all of the above with added jam aplomb. He must have felt like John Cage telling his disgruntled punk grandsons to "do whatever." Some editing and afterthought would have gone a long way. Each song sounds like if Led Zeppelin had released the 25:25 version of "Dazed and Confused" off How the West Was Won instead of the concise 6:26 cut on their debut.
De-Loused in the Comatorium will undoubtedly rekindle prog, or at least spur a reassessment of the genre. Somewhere, kids will proclaim The Mars Volta to sound like Fugazi's End Hits mixed with The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (which it sort of does)-- the Comatorium title "Eriatarka" even sounds like Spanish for "Aquatarkus"-- but few will confess to actually liking Genesis or ELP. Though The Mars Volta may be prog in the traditional sense, they're in no way "progressive," just as The Hives do not record their music in a "garage." So it boils down to whether you're one to cherish the originals, keep up with the newbies, or forsake it all as fustian garbage.
The other band often evoked in The Mars Volta press is Santana. That's just offensive. Omar and Cedric's last names are Rodriguez-Lopez and Zavala, right? They use bongos? They must sound like Santana! That's like comparing Living Colour's Stain to Love's Forever Changes. The percussive break on "Drunkship of Lanterns" just as shallowly traces back to the Miami Sound Machine.
If any, the album constantly recalled during Comatorium listens is Mansun's 1998 sprawl, Six. The seagull-screaming guitar solos on "Roulette Dares" mimic Dominic Chad's playing on tracks like "Negative" and "Shotgun". The magic-trick studio transitions sound eerily similar on both records. Mansun even shared The Mars Volta's goal of fusing punk and prog. The difference: Mansun realized the entertaining bridge between the two is glam-rock. It's a preposterous fusion to begin with, since both genres were originally seen as reactions to one another (see: Johnny Rotten's t-shirts), and Mansun barely pulled it off with knowing camp; The Mars Volta just straddle the chasm on a cracking rope woven of dour attitude, showers of effects, and Latin percussion.
My biggest complaint is that De-Loused in the Comatorium just isn't fun. Virtuosity-to-a-fault was the death of prog in the 70s, but The Mars Volta's aimless hammer-and-wail tactics-- whether performed with deep-seeded passion or not-- is just as regrettable. This record bursts with vim and accelerates breathtakingly. Audiophiles will sop both sides of the headphones for the additive-laden gravy of sounds. Cedric and Omar play with such intensity and soul. What they lack is any ability to convey where their passion comes from, either lyrically and musically. As such, De-Loused in the Comatorium swirls around as a galaxy of inexplicable sturm and angst. If they can find ways to deliver this music convincingly and lucidly to their listeners, The Mars Volta might be on to something.
