The Mars Volta - Noctourniquet

http://www.themarsvolta.com/splash/

Finally some confirmation. This album has been rumored to be out "soon" for about a year it seems. Here's the track listing.

Quote :

1. The Whip Hand
2. Aegis
3. Dyslexicon
4. Empty Vessels Make The Loudest Sound
5. The Malkin Jewel
6. Lapochka
7. In Absentia
8. Imago
9. Molochwalker
10. Trinkets Pale Of Moon
11. Vedamaly
12. Noctourniquet
13. Zed And Two Naughts

Cover art kind of reminds me of the SNES version of Star Fox or something.

New Single has been released, entitled "The Malkin Jewel." You can listen to it here or download it at amazon/itunes.



I've only listened to this song once so far but even for The Mars Volta, it's pretty weird. I'm liking it though. Some of the strangeness has an air of Piper at the Gates of Dawn to my ears, which wouldn't be surprising since TMV have always professed a love for Syd Barret-era Floyd.

I'll need to listen to this a few more times before fully processing it.

Meh. As usual.

im not overly impressed, but its listenable and i still anticipate the new album.

Yes, it's not the most brilliant song ever, but such is often the case for leading singles. I do enjoy the song. I'll definitely buy the new album on the day of its release

More trippy nostalgia wrapped in immense talent from the Mars Volta! I will be buying this CD!

I admire their audacity and salute their influences...but this really doesn't work on any level.

almost like "Vegetable Man", interesting.

I still prefer Frances the Mute

S.D. wrote:

I admire their audacity and salute their influences...but this really doesn't work on any level.

I'm kind of curious, what do you mean that it doesn't work, exactly?

exact33 wrote:

I still prefer Frances the Mute

That is a great album. I'm not exactly sure if it's my favorite. If you include the single "Frances the Mute" then it probably is. But I definitely go back and forth with that and Deloused. I think that their 4th album, Bedlam in Goliath, also is excellent and maybe a bit underrated. It is just as experimental as their earlier work but is filled with a ton of energy. Which is definitely a contrast with Frances, which is much more spacey.

The only album of theirs that I found disappointing is their last one, but I've even warmed up to that over the years.

Tur-Thalion wrote:

S.D. wrote:

I admire their audacity and salute their influences...but this really doesn't work on any level.

I'm kind of curious, what do you mean that it doesn't work, exactly?

It sounds like a bunch of random stuff thrown together without any actual sense of a "song" anywhere. If it was an instrumental I'd probably find it more interesting, doesn't work as a vocal track though...at least not for me.

Tur-Thalion wrote:

S.D. wrote:

I admire their audacity and salute their influences...but this really doesn't work on any level.

I'm kind of curious, what do you mean that it doesn't work, exactly?

exact33 wrote:

I still prefer Frances the Mute

That is a great album. I'm not exactly sure if it's my favorite. If you include the single "Frances the Mute" then it probably is. But I definitely go back and forth with that and Deloused. I think that their 4th album, Bedlam in Goliath, also is excellent and maybe a bit underrated. It is just as experimental as their earlier work but is filled with a ton of energy. Which is definitely a contrast with Frances, which is much more spacey.

The only album of theirs that I found disappointing is their last one, but I've even warmed up to that over the years.

Deloused was very good too.

Well I don't expect much response here given people's opinions expressed above, but has anyone heard the new album? If so what are your thoughts?

By the way, to SD's comment about the album single being haphazardly thrown together, I would say the album as a whole is very cohesive.

Here is a track I really like:

I love love love the first three..... the last two not so much. Kind of shied away from this one...

When you say "shied away" from it, do you mean you don't like it, or that you just haven't gotten around to hearing it yet?

As for the previous two, I get not liking Octahedron. I'm slowly warming up to it but it's not that great as a whole. But Bedlam in Goliath is, I think pure brilliance. What do you not like about it?

Haven't heard it yet.

With 'Bedlam' I feel the combination of what the songwriting is like, and the production, is not allowing things to breathe. In something like 'Cygnus..' from FTM, it's tightly wrapped with a lot going on, but there's still separation, still instrumentation...drums aside, a lot of what I heard on the busier tracks on 'Bedlam' was production. Just sound. Like on pop songs where you hear orchestral stuff but there's no credits to any real string players. I will revisit it, but it turned me off pretty bad.

Going through it again right now.

so 4 songs in and I've figured out what's wrong with 'Bedlam in Goliath'. TMV has become Blind Guardian. Vocal lines, vocal lines, vocal lines, vocal lines, and - hey, look, more vocal lines on top of those vocal lines. I heard u like vocal lines, so I put some vocal lines in ur vocal lines so u can listen to vocal lines while u listen to vocal lines. As one would think, they run out of ones which are interesting or memorable, meanwhile the instruments get to be big loud wallpaper save for the occasional Omar lead... the good one in 'Metatron'..which, coincidentally, has the most annoying chorus of any TMV song ever. At least there's 'Tourniquet Man'.....

I take it you quit at that point? My favorite songs are actually the last 4 or so. Oh well. Tourniquet Man is one of my least favorite TMV songs.

What's your take on the Omar side projects? Any of it any good, how different are they?

Ha! Great question, but I'm not suited to answer, because he has just released far too many of them. I own the first four of his side projects, and I really like the self-titled one, Omar Rodriguez, which seems to me to be more jazz fusion. It has some killer jams on it. I also really like Please Heat This Eventually (which has Damo Suzuki on vocals). Also a great proggy jam.

Manual Dexterity, and Se Dice Bisonte No Bufalo, have their high points but overall they're not that great.

Based on reviews at progarchives, I want to check out The Apocalypse Inside of an Orange. But I haven't even tried to keep up with all his solo stuff. He released way too much way too quickly

Amputecture is still my favorite

These guys apparently have split-up if anyone cares...

Quote :

The Mars Volta singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala says the prog band have split after guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez refused to take part in a US tour.

Zavala blamed the move on Lopez’ interest in his new band, Bosnian Rainbows. In a furious tweet the vocalist demanded: “What am I supposed to be, some progressive housewife that’s cool with watching their partner go Smurf other bands?”

The duo formed The Mars Volta in 2001 after previous outfit At The Drive-In collapsed. They won a Grammy in 2009. Last year they said they’d gone on hiatus while Lopez concentrated on his new project.

But Zavala has claimed that was never really the case. In a series of tweets he said last night: “I guess a break from Mars Volta means starting another band and ignoring all the support the fans gave us.

“I can’t sit here and pretend any more. I no longer am a member of Mars Volta. Sadly it’s over.”

Thanking fans for their support he continued: “For the record I tried my hardest to get a full scale North American tour going but Omar did not want to.

“I just feel really guilty for not even really saying the truth because ‘a hiatus’ is just an insult to the fans. All I can do is move forward with my music and just be happy that Mars Volta ever happened at all. Godd*mn we had a blast.”

The side projects were sucking some of the life out of them in more ways than one.... Rather this happen then mediocre stuff being put out ad nauseum, but I sure would love something else to the quality of the first three. And yeah people should care, someone like Ult for example who is into harder, diverse prog rock, that early stuff is very very very good.

That sucks!!!!!!!