This album took me a while to get into. On the first couple of spins, I didn’t find the third studio album by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and crew to be quite as immediate as the first two. However, it grows with repeated listens. And eventually, it’s worth it.
It’s got the same mixture bizarre of alternative, prog-rock and traditional Mexican music, and again features the guitar playing of John Frusciante. It starts slowly; the creepily atmospheric opener “Vicarious Atonement” begins with two minutes of fluid but spooky blues guitar before the equally spectral vocals come it. The following lengthy “Tetragrammaton” is much closer to The Mars Volta’s sound on earlier albums with its bursts of staccato guitar riffs and machine gun drumming interspersed with gentler moments and effects-laden instrumental sections. And there are several more where that came from. But there are some new elements; “Vermicide” is probably the nearest The Mars Volta will ever get to a power ballad. And breaking new territory is the sparse “Asilos Magdelena”, sung in Spanish, with just a naked acoustic guitar for most of the song.
Overall, it might lack some of the frenetic energy of their debut, “Deloused in the Comatorium”, but there’s plenty enough to reward the listener once you get beneath the skin of the record.
