The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium

After the fall of At the Drive-In, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodruigez Lopez wanted to take the experimental music to a higher scale. They soon formed the Mars Volta and relased their EP Tremulant EP, and their conceptual madness, De-Loused In The Comatorium which is almost a strange but brilliant rock opera on what would happen if the Mars Volta would do their own concpet album based on Lewis Carroll's psychedelic story of Alice in Wonderland. The true origins of De-Loused is based on Julio Vengas from At the Drive-In who suffered from a coma after he took a dose of morphine and then came back and took his own life in 1996 of suicide. De-Loused is a mixture of King Crimson, Salsa Music, early Floyd material, and the homage of '70s Krautrock mixed with Punk. This is the true album that the Mars Voltat knows they're roots very well. The beginning track, Son Et Lumiere/Intertiatic ESP is a real kick in the gut piece. Mixed with Fleas' funky bass punk sound, Cedric's wailing voice, and Omar's guitar going up to a higher ground. You have the sense of a true nature. While you listen to this shocking but suprising track, they defintely go into shock treatment. Roulette Dares(The Haunt Of) is more of a Crimso meets Black Flag track. Tira Me a Las Aranas and Drunkship of Lanterns are more of a slow acoustic darker ballad into the tunnels of spiders and then it becomes a pumping heart of the Mahavishnu Orchestra punks and Robert Fripp guitar style. The last five tracks are most a cimatic roller-coaster ride with faster time signatures, reverbing sound effects, midsts of the jungle, and the fall of the comatorium. Eria Tarka is a thrilling mellotronic journey into hell, the 12-minute Cicatriz ESP is the ultimate trip of shrilling eerie guitar sounds into the abyss, This Apparthus Must Be Unearthed is the moment of death with Punk like Prog of soothing and metal jazz for Cerpin Taxt, Televators is more like something out of the 1973 british horror classic The Wicker Man where the hero makes his scrifice in the jungle and falls to this death while Omar's classical guitar sets the scene while Cedric's voalcs helps the details of Julio's death. And if you think that the album's over and done with, think again, the 8-minute hardcore experimental track Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt is a true heavy metal mixed with a little bit of Rush meets Can's Deadlock (Part II). The album and the group were off to a running start to take Prog Rock into jam band territory.