The Mars Volta

Members: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Blake Fleming, Isaiah Ikey Owens, Juan Alderete de la Pena, Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez, Adrian Terrazas-Gonzales, Pablo Hinojos-Gonzalez

Active: 2001-present

HISTORY

The Mars Volta is an American rock group founded by Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. They are generally considered progressive rock, with heavy punk and Latin influences. They are known for their wild live shows, cryptic lyrics and experimentation in, and use of, ambient music, to help establish mood.

Members of the band At the Drive-In, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, were in DeFacto with audio technician Jeremy Michael Ward. DeFacto included Cedric on drums, Omar on bass, and Jeremy with various loop, vocal, sound, and distortion effects - a composite of sounds, hinging squarely on tripped-out, instrumental dub. Though DeFacto started as a local band with a rock feel, they were rooted in the realm of dub reggae pioneers such as Lee Perry and Dr. Alimantado. The group also dabbled in electronica, Latin/salsa, and jazz which provided them with a distinct sound. The band played local shows around their home town, El Paso, Texas, and released their first album How do you dub? You Fight for Dub. You plug Dub in. The group eventually moved to Long Beach, California in 2000 and the keyboardist Isaiah "Ikey" Owens was added to the band lineup. Ikey brought a distinct tone to DeFacto that provided a new popularity previously not received. In 2001, DeFacto released their second album, Megaton Shotblast on Gold Standard Laboratories, and received instant success. They were also members of the Group At the Drive-In, which established much of their fan base. DeFacto continued experimenting with new sounds after Omar and Cedric decided to end At the Drive-In (the rest of the band went on to form Sparta), Eva Gardner joined the band, becoming what is now The Mars Volta - a new project they envisioned would fulfill their creative desires. The initial lineup for their first public show at Chain Reaction in Anaheim, California was DeFacto plus Eva Gardner and Jon Theodore. Also, during 2001, the band recorded two songs with Alex Newport, becoming their first demo. They recorded three more tracks with Alex Newport, becoming the Tremulant EP, sparsely released in early 2002.

DE-LOUSED IN THE COMATORIUM

Following the Tremulant EP, The Mars Volta continued touring and changing band members while preparing for De-Loused in the Comatorium, produced with Rick Rubin. Whereas Tremulant had no general theme (except the prophetic mentioning of its follow-up album), De-Loused was a unified work of speculative fiction that told the story from the first-person perspective of a drug-induced coma. Though lyrically obtuse, The Mars Volta stated in interviews that the album's protagonist is based on their late friend Julio Venegas, or "Cerpin Taxt", as mentioned in the story, who was in a coma several years prior to his awakening, in which he jumped from the Mesa Street overpass onto Interstate-10 in El Paso during afternoon rush-hour traffic. Venegas's death was also referenced in the At the Drive-In song "Embroglio" from their album Acrobatic Tenement.

At the time of the recording the band did not have a bass player. Flea (bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers) played bass on nine of the ten songs on the LP. De-Loused became both critically and commercially their biggest hit, eventually selling in excess of 500,000 copies despite next-to-no promotion, but featured on several critics' "Best of the Year" lists. The band later released a limited-edition storybook version of the album, available by download from the Gold Standard Laboratories Web site. The book speaks of Cerpin Taxt (sometimes referred to as the album/story's "hero") and his suicide.

While on tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in support of their album, The Mars Volta's sound manipulator and contributing lyricist, Jeremy Ward, was found dead of a heroin overdose. The band canceled the tour's second leg and the first single from De-Loused was later dedicated to Ward.

FRANCES THE MUTE

As the band resumed touring De-Loused, they added Juan Alderete (Racer X) on bass and Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez (brother of Omar) on percussion. Work began on their second album in 2004.

In 2005, the band released their second full-length album Frances the Mute. The album was inspired by late sound technician Jeremy Ward, who found a diary in a car he repossessed while working as a repo-man. Each track of the album is loosely based on characters described within the diary.

Frances started out as an even bigger commercial hit than De-Loused, moving 123,000 copies in its first week and debuting at number four on the Billboard album charts, largely because "The Widow" received a considerable amount of radio air-play. Reviews of Frances were generally positive (with a 74 on Metacritic) if somewhat polarized; Rolling Stone called it "a feverish and baroque search for self that conjures up the same majesty and gravity as Led Zeppelin three decades before," while Pitchfork Media called it "a homogeneous shitheap of stream-of-consciousness turgidity." However, even the detractors of "Frances of the Mute" generally praised the band's musical abilities. "L'Via L'Viaquez" was later released as a single, stripped down from its original 12-minute length to five minutes.

Omar wrote all the instrumental parts (guitar, keyboard, vocal melodies, and drum lines with help from Theodore) as well as arranging and producing the session himself. He used a method that film directors such as Woody Allen used to invoke great performances from bandmates: refusing to let the other members hear each other's parts, or the context of their own part, thereby forcing them to play each part as if it's a self-sufficient song. In order to accomplish this, the musicians recorded to the pulse of a metronome.

Mid-way through their headlining U.S. tour, former At the Drive-In member Paul Hinojos left the band Sparta to join The Mars Volta, claiming: "My time with Sparta has run its course, and simply wasn't fun anymore." He is now their 'Sound-Manipulator,' previously held by the late Ward. Hinojos had also toured with The Mars Volta in 2003 and 2004.

The band toured the summer of 2005 with System of a Down in support of the album and curated the All Tomorrow's Parties festival, titled A Nightmare Before Christmas.

In addition, a full-length live album named Scabdates was released on November 8th, 2005.

Frances the Mute, which debuted at a career-best No. 4 on the Billboard Top 200, has sold nearly 465,000 copies in the United States according to Nielsen SoundScan ratings.

AMPUTECHTURE AND TOUR

The band has finished the recording of their third album, Amputechture, expected to be released September 12th, 2006. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez produced the record and Rich Costey mixed it. The artwork was created by Jeff Jordan.

"An excerpt of a recent interview with Cedric Bixler-Zavala reveals more details on John Frusciante's work with the Mars Volta on their next record," according to www.frusciante.net.

"Chili Peppers fans will be excited to learn that guitarist John Frusciante has again been working with the band. 'Since Omar is producing it and recording it,' Cedric said, "he taught Frusciante all the new songs and Frusciante tracked guitars for us so Omar could sit back and listen to the songs objectively. It's great that he wants to help us and do that'."

The band is going on tour to open for the Red Hot Chili Peppers in a late Summer/Fall tour of 2006.

In addition, a remix album is in the works; however, nothing has yet been announced.

The song "Viscera Eyes," from the band's upcoming album, was recently added to their MySpace page. The song was added in two parts, however, because it is over 9 minutes in length. This has now been replaced with a radio edit, running at 4:21.

On July 28th 2006, the publicist for the band has said the following in a press release: "The Mars Volta cast that performed Amputechture will be modified for live dates that begin imminently, with drummer Jon Theodore replaced by Blake Fleming, formerly of Laddio Bolocko and Dazzling Killmen and actually the drummer who played on the very first Mars Volta demos. Pablo Hinojos-Gonzalez will expand his role, contributing both guitar and sound manipulation skills. Finally, while not a member of the touring Mars Volta band per se, Amputechture contributor John Frusciante, on the other hand, will be in close proximity, as his Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Mars Volta are scheduled to tour together through November 2006."

After their Fall tour with Frusciante's Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Mars Volta will launch their own headlining tour across North America that will last "well into 2007."

STUDIO ALBUMS

2003 - De-Loused in the Comatorium

2005 - Frances the Mute

2006 - Amputechture

EP'S

2002 - Tremulant EP

LIVE

2003 - Live EP

2005 - Scabdates

COMPILATIONS

2005 - A Missing Chromosome

SINGLES

2003 - Inertiatic ESP

2004 - Televators

2005 - The Widow

2005 - L'Via L'Viaquez

2006 - Viscera Eyes