Send "The Mars Volta " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Spin |
 Unless you're the kind of prog-rock nut who plans to buy I Love You, Man on DVD just to relive the scene at the Rush concert, you're probably suffering from an acute case of Mars Volta Fatigue right about now. (Symptoms include naming your child Parallax Symbiosis and ordering the "deaf con of Angora goats" at fancy restaurants.) Guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, in particular, has diluted the potency of the band's brand, issuing an endless string of increasingly impenetrable solo discs that make you wonder if the guy is paid by the note.Given its typically foreboding title, Octahedron would not appear to be a cure for this disorder. Yet these eight tracks -- only one of which stretches past the eight-minute mark! -- actually make up the Mars Volta's most consistently compelling slab since 2005's salsafied Frances the Mute. Make no mistake: Rodriguez-Lopez still favors 12 solos where one will do, and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala's lyrics make no more literal sense than they ever have. But on gorgeous psych-soul ballads like "Copernicus" and "Since We've Been Wrong," these hardcore noise freaks show off a sensual streak, while fierce rockers such as "Teflon" and "Cotopaxi" burn with purpose, not just technique. "I can't believe anymore," Bixler-Zavala wails over an escalating punk-funk groove in "Desperate Graves." For the first time in a while, though, you might....full text |
| Clashmusic |
| Apart from their resemblance to Mos and Richmond from The IT Crowd (Errr, what? – obviously-not-blind Ed), everything about The Mars Volta is very serious. They have a wonderful sense of the fantastical, and are able to convincingly use fanciful stories from their own lives as an influence, both on their lyrics and music and as an exciting melodramatic backdrop to their already bombastic progressive rock albums. Take last effort ‘The Bedlam in Goliath’ for example: its recording was riddled with disasters and weird tomb-of-Tutankhamun-esque happenings, all attributed to a ouija board the band picked up in Jerusalem. Whether the stories are true or not is unimportant, as they add a vital element of gravitas and mysticism to the music that the band seems to be constantly looking for. While there's no amusing back-story, the same is definitely evident in ‘Octahedron’ – a title that brings to mind mystic cults, or Kenneth Anger films. Speaking about the release in an interview last year, Cedric Bixler-Zavala said: "It's more mellow. It's a little more of what we consider our 'acoustic' side." And it does seem to be as close as the band will ever get to acoustic – while ‘…Goliath’ opened with the face-melting ‘Aberinkula’, ‘Octahedron’ opens with several seconds of silence, slowly building with weeping guitars and fiery vocals, which, perhaps as always with prog-rock, run a fine line between passionate and laughable....full text |
| Contactmusic |
| This album is a bit of an enigma to me. Starting with a minute's forty worth of silence until meandering into the quasi-ballad Since We've Been Wrong, it's pretty confusing. The Mars Volta have been calling this album their 'acoustic' album; clarifying that, it's not actually an acoustic album- more that they're taking a bit of a rest with the music, chilling out a little. I don't know why. The 'Volta have always been best when they build songs to a crescendo- their epics are what I look forward to on any album, tracks like Cicatriz ESP from their debut, the quarter of an hour long Amputechture (from the album of the same name), and this album is sorely lacking in this department. That's not to say that it's a bad album by any stretch, it's just that when listening to it, I feel a little bit disappointed that they don't seem to have tried very hard with this- or if they have, if this is a new direction, or simply chilling out, then I don't really agree with what they're trying to do: a Mars Volta album is not something that you should be able to put on in the background- it should assault your ears and change your perceptions. This album, quite simply, doesn't do that....full text |
The Mars Volta lyrics
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