Noctourniquet - The Mars Volta Album Review

The Mars Volta

Image: link

Album Review

A decade after rising out of the ashes of At The Drive-In, like an outlandish phoenix - The Mars Volta are back with their sixth album where the bizarre and the absurd still play a huge part in proceedings. Gone though are the self-indulgent, free-flowing fifteen-minute songs and also frequent collaborator John Frusciante, but in enters a more rigid song structure and new drummer Deatoni Parks who seems to have injected a new surge of energy into the band.

The Mars Volta have created their most accessible and musically technical album to date. The intensity of prog-rock of previous albums (see Amputechture) is not as evident in Noctourniquet, instead slow(er)-burning tracks like 'Trinkets Pale Of Moon', and 'Lapochka' give the album a depth that previous Mars Volta albums have sometimes been lacking. Worth noting are the nods to contemporary influences that the band include, such as: Nick Cave on 'The Malkin Jewel', Muse on 'Aegis' and the acknowledgement of Radiohead in the soundscapes evident throughout the record.

Despite there being some structure and additional depth to the album, The Mars Volta have not produced a boring or run-of-the-mill record, far from it. The weirdness starts to hit you about 90 seconds into opening track 'The Whip Hand' where a bombastic synth comes out of nowhere. OK, so a synth in the middle of a track may not seem that weird or peculiar to most people, but looking at the record as a whole, The Mars Volta create such an unexpected treat for a band on their sixth album - combining vocal showpieces with eccentric compositions, which creates their most listener-friendly album without alienating the hardcore fans. The melodies are the album's greatest asset and they have hit the nail on the head in evolving their sound to bring in new fans whom may have been sceptical towards them in the past.

Lucas Jones