Absorption/Transmission

In 2001, as the post-hardcore group was beginning to reach critical hype, At The Drive-In, citing serious artistic differences, fissured into Sparta and The Mars Volta. While Sparta took a more traditional rock route from ATDI, as The Mars Volta, guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala chose to blaze a more experimental trail.

When they drag the lake there’s nothing left at all
I’ve defected
Sutured contusion beyond the anthills of the dawning of this plague
Said I’ve lost my way
-Cicatriz ESP

2003’s De-Loused In The Comatorium is a concept album (based on the life and death of a close friend) in which the main character, while comatose from a morphine overdose experiences beauties and truths which are so devastatingly crushed by reality that he ultimately, upon awakening, takes his own life. Omar’s luminary guitar sets out across a sea of Latin percussion and complexly transient time signatures navigating each song through the chunky, mountainous waves that The Mars Volta creates. Lyrically, the album is characterized by Cedric’s puzzlingly verbose verses (“A half mass commute through umbilical blisters”) and anthemic choruses (“Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delayed”).

Cedric and Omar’s musical mission statement, De-Loused In The Comatorium is a psychedelic, hard-jazz sonic masterpiece. This precisely frantic declaration of independence successfully juxtaposes the band’s punk-rock accomplishments with their prog-rock ambitions. Listen: The official music video for “Televators,” De-Loused’s hauntingly lone ballad and two videos of “Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of);” the first, a brief clip from Toad’s Place in New Haven this past January and the second, some kid playing the whole song on piano.