El Paso, TX · prog-rock

The Mars Volta

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At the Drive-In's cosmic successors — salsa-prog freakouts and falsetto fire, 'The Widow' amid the labyrinth.

Following the breakup of At the Drive-In, Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala formed The Mars Volta in 2001, wanting to push their sound further outward with a shifting cast of collaborators. The name draws on their shared admiration for Federico Fellini: Mars nods to outer space and science fiction, while Volta comes from a term Fellini used for a turning point in time.

After the Tremulant EP in 2002, bassist Eva Gardner left before the recording of the debut album, De-Loused in the Comatorium, which was produced by Rick Rubin with Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea filling in on bass. The follow-up, Frances the Mute, was self-produced and became their biggest commercial success, entering the US Billboard 200 at No. 4 and going gold.

The music pulls progressive rock structures through Latin percussion, dub-influenced production, free-jazz blowing and long stretches of noise and abstraction, with Bixler-Zavala's high, elastic vocals carrying dense narrative lyrics.

Amputechture followed in 2006, and The Bedlam in Goliath in 2008 was built around the band's unsettling experiences with a ouija-style talking board; its single 'Wax Simulacra' won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. Octahedron and Noctourniquet followed before the band went quiet in 2013 amid a falling-out between its two founders.

Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala repaired their friendship in 2014, working together in Antemasque and on further At the Drive-In shows, before secretly recording a new self-titled Mars Volta album in 2019. Its 2022 announcement came with an art installation, and the band returned to the stage with Gardner, Marcel Rodríguez-López, Leo Genovese and Linda-Philomène Tsoungui, trading much of the earlier sprawl for shorter, more song-shaped material, ahead of a ninth album in 2025.

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prog-rock