The Mars Volta - Ochtahedron

When your debut album is a modern masterpiece that undulates from the proggy stratospheres right down to the gritty slums of salsa-punk, you’re left with the dilemma of choosing which road to go down next. Since 2003’s De-Loused in the Comatorium, The Mars Volta have attempted to overcome this problem by employing a plethora of recording approaches, but it’s on Ochtahedron that their blueprint is truly tinkered with for the first time.

This is – deep breath - The Mars Volta’s acoustic album. However, that’s ‘acoustic’ in a ‘that place has atmospheric acoustics’ way, rather than an ‘I prefer Dylan’s acoustic period’ sense. Indeed, as vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala has noted, the album has “electricity throughout it”, but the decision to explore less cluttered sonic spaces means that The Mars Volta have finally produced an album that is an arresting a listening experience as their De-Loused debut.

The opener, Since We’ve Been Wrong, is a perfect example of this new approach; the production is dry, the rhythms symmetrical, allowing the track to breath slowly and deeply, rather than in the frantic prog-rock gasps we’ve come to expect. Similarly, With Twilight As My Guide is stripped down enough to showcase Bixler-Zavala’s creepy vocal sex change, from tender tenor into feminine falsetto. That’s not to say there’s nothing familiar here; Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s trademark reverb-soaked slide guitar is still threaded over the songs like sci-fi cob-webs, while Halo of Nembutals features the kind of surreal imagery of “necrophiliacs” and “prisms” that we’ve come to expect from the duo. But it’s tracks like Copernicus that show how much the band have evolved. The kind of touching, gorgeous love song that both Top Ten balladeers and earnest indie strummers yearn to produce, it features a vocal that lovingly bends itself around the lyric “I held you in crippled bandages/don’t you stay up to wait for me”. Then, just as you expect sentimental rigor mortis to set in, an inexplicable glitch-hop beat buzzes into view like a wasp at a picnic.

Therein lies the success of Ochtahedron - like a Henry Moore sculpture, it’s undeniably experimental, and yet, it has an underlying pop appeal that could lead to a real growth in their fan base. While a lyric like “feast on the carcass of your mother” may be a tad too Oedipal for Radio One, it’s a sign that The Mars Volta have not lost any of the ambition and individuality that made them stand out from the crowd six years ago.