This morning is "cardio day" and since my suffering calves have been holding out well on the treadmill lately, I'm doing Saturday's 6 x 5 minutes walk/5 minutes run workout once more, this time with the new eponymous album by the Mars Volta.
The Mars Volta is the seventh studio album by American progressive rock band, released through Clouds Hill on September 16th, 2022. Self-titled to mark a "clean slate" in the band's history, it is the band's first studio album in over ten years, following their 2012 album, Noctourniquet, and subsequent break-up. After reuniting in secret in 2019, band leaders Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala made a conscious effort to break from their previous progressive rock sound and record a pop-influenced album, with Bixler-Zavala directly addressing his family's recent struggles with the Church of Scientology in his lyrics.
Oooooo that sounds juicy~!
Opening with the pair of singles that heralded the comeback, Blacklight Shine and Graveyard Love, it's obvious that the band's aural palette has been significantly stretched. As emphasised by the twin music videos, which celebrate the people of Puerto Rico, The Mars Volta's undulating Latin and Caribbean rhythms still form the bedrock of their sound, but now exist within a denser soup of laddering synths, trance-like counter-guitar riffs and soul-touching organ.
While anger and hysteria was never far from the surface throughout the band's earlier work, here gleaming beauty takes precedence. From the sumptuous R&B of Shore Story, the affecting, haunting lament 'Tourmaline' and the album's high watermark, Palm Full of Crux, Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López concoct an emotive, hook-soaked listening experience. Those worrying that this shift might signal a dilution of the drama that coursed through their abrasive classics should fear not; Cedric's streaming words still flow like rivers of magma, though now bristle with the type of mortality-conscious, weathered experience that only age can bring.
As far motivational goes through 60 minutes of treadmill work ... okay. I mean, it was entertaining enough, sure, but that's really where it ends with this specific album.
Good effort, but meh.
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