The Mars Volta – Octahedron
Universal/Motown
Reviewed by Chip Norman
The Mars Volta are back with their latest role-playing game, Octahedron. Guitar Center employees and dudes driving Jeep Wranglers are stoked. I, on the other hand, am PISSED that this conceptual adventure took HOURS of my life to get through. And so, because my time has been wasted already, I’m going to cut some corners by preemptively answering the obvious questions about Octahedron.
YES, The Mars Volta’s songs are still obnoxious and unbearably long.
YES, Octahedron is nu-prog.
YES, prog-rock still sucks.
YES, Cedric’s voice still quivers like the sound of a fairy pinching a loaf. And the next time this wood nymph starts making those noises in the recording booth, a good Samaritan needs to inflict a wedgie on the freak until blood is drawn. Someone else needs to film it.
NO, Fro-mar hasn’t found a scale chart. His profound musical ignorance, of course, enables him to puke out thirty off-key Tito Puente cover albums a year, and still have time to produce a shameful Olsen twins album or whatever. Embarrassing.
NO, gratuitous vocal effects do not hide lyrics that sound like the magical incantations of a level-33, basement-dwelling Warlock.
YES, three-hour gaps between songs still punish with the sounds of cosmic wind chimes and other new-age, midi trash. Someone keep these hairballs out of shops that sell crystals and gargoyles. No waiting in line for Space Mountain, either.
YES, the album cover looks like Lisa Frank puked on a Pink Floyd LP.
YES, Fro-mar would make a better mop than guitarist.
That should cover the most general queries regarding Octahedron. As you can see, nothing has changed.
Some sharp readers might ask how The Mars Volta can wring never-ending prog-tripe from their afros, and yet not produce a single genuine song along the way. In response, I can only suppose that The Mars Volta have no idea why music is actually created. That honesty is one of the primary values of Rock & Roll, seems a fact lost on The Mars Volta. These fronters have never written a meaningful song, much less one that meets basic guidelines for coherency.
Sure, Cedric’s hyperventilating falsetto is purposed for inspiring feelings of depth, but this interpretive dancer isn’t fooling anyone. No decent human being could sing the following with sincerity:
“When sanskrit was my mother tongue, scarabs filled my pillow. Tarmac strips to pave for them. And thrones from which to teach. And in that pulse the future said. The story had been spun.”
This being the fifth dinosaur rock release from The Mars Volta, it’s not news that they write nonsensical gibberish. The real story is how the fuck home-fro can tell his own songs apart after regurgitating this Harry Potter bullshit through every single track. Silly lyrics about scarabs and mothers, punctuated with the occasional obnoxious Spanish tangent, might blow the tops off of the Mars Volta’s jock, RHCP-loving fan base, but Cedric is still skipping like a really weird record that got warped in the sun. If he actually ran out of imaginary words and unintelligible phrases to spout off, The Mars Volta is in a bad way. Perhaps someone needs to buy a certain boyfriend a new Dungeon Master’s Handbook to mill nerd vocabulary from.
Given that Octahedron is the musical analog to Alf, the recent talks of an At The Drive-In reunion are not at all surprising. It seems as though Fro-mar’s “producer for the starlets” gig has gotten so shifty that even faithful Cedric is eying an exit-strategy. Unfortunately, It doesn’t look like the moody emo from Sparta is having it. And so, Sam is still stuck with Fro-do. And they both deserve it. You said so yourself, Cedric:
“You wet your bed so sleep in it. Cards can’t make a house.”
