Digg this storySometimes musicians can do no wrong. Thousand of critics and fans alike cite the likes of Thom Yorke, Robert Pollard, Sufjan Stevens and others as demigods of their craft.
But there are those who can do wrong. It turns out Omar Rodriguez and Cedrix Bixler fall into this category.
It pains me to say it, and it probably makes you mad too, but The Mars Volta sucks. This is masturbatory guitarist narcissicm to the fullest extent — the Yngwie of indie rock.
The Mars Volta, in typical hipster attire. The band’s brand of masturbatory, self-indulgent prog rock brings Yngwie Malmsteen to mind.I suppose there might be someone who likes this. Like that guy we all know who’s always doped up and never misses a chance to drop six hits of acid. You know — that guy who thinks he’s an orange now.
We all loved At The Drive-In. And how couldn’t we, with those studly afros, crackhead performance antics (which were so much more hypnotically suave than Thom Yorke’s drug-addled tremors, I might add), and an effortless fusion of melodic and hardcore influence. This band was beautiful. Like watching a colossal tornado destroy a small midwestern town in super slow motion. Breathtaking, you know?
And then they split. Into two species of the opposite spectrum. The very two species who initially bred to form this magnificent creature of sound in the first place. While most of the band took their radio-friendly hooks and vocals to form Sparta, Cedric and Omar couldn’t manage to let go of their giant egos and instead started playing… prog rock?? WTF? There is nothing more annoying than prog rock (until someone starts playing prog country, in which case we are all doomed to an eternity of hell on earth). The term prog by definition should mean horrible. Or megalomania at least.
While the initial Mars Volta releases were tolerable (and in some rare cases actually good), they have since evolved into some kind of terrifying egomaniacal space mutant destroying otherwise good songs by stretching them to infinity and leaving them to fester in their own urine and feces and boring guitardom. To be fair, Bixler’s vocals are still pretty good — it’s mostly Rodriguez who stagnates these promising beginnings into the stale, drudging, ear-piercing wreckage they become.
After listening to Sparta and The Mars Volta separately, it becomes pretty easy to hear the reason for their prior successes and their neoteric failures.
It’s that simple — like a yin yang.