The album In Casino Out (Fearless, 1998) and the EP Vaja (Fearless, 1999) completed the maturation of the line-up with Cedric Bixler on vocals, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (born in Puerto Rico but raised in El Paso, Texas) and Jim Ward on guitar, Paul Himojos on bass and Tony Haijar on drums. The album will remain their quintessential statement. Foaming at the mouth, Bixlet rides the instrumental fever that propels Alpha Centauri, a mixture of punk epilepsy and country gallop that indulges in tempo shifts and syncopated "stop-starts". The band does not hesitate to careen through odd meters and to adorn the melody with dissonant guitars, as in For Now We Toast. The unusual balance of grotesque and tragic employed by these songs is the very "raison d'etre" of A Devil Among the Tailors.
Instrumental creativity and vocal pyrotechnics are wed to a relatively catchy chorus in Hulahoop Wounds. The guitar pattern in Chanbara sounds like a call to arms, while the vocalist shouts his angst to the moon. The tender and melodic piano-based Hourglass sounds a little out of context, but proves that the preceding chaos was not due to ineptitude albeit to design.
While the musical roots of the band are in the tradition of hardcore punk-rock, At The Drive-in are consumed by the fire of Fugazi's progressive-hardcore and develop their songs to the level of the three-minute teen psychodrama, rather than leaving it at the level of embryonic one-minute rant.

A more professional production on Relationship of Command (Grand Royal, 2000) helped bring out the ferocity without sacrificing the art. Here one can easily check the influences of the quintet. Arcarsenal takes off amid tribal drums and guitar squeaks with a guitar-bass combination that is reminiscent of Guns N' Roses and with vocals drenched in MC5-grade emphatic frenzy. The rapping on Pattern Against User sounds more like one of Jello Biafra's rants. One Armed Scissor borrows the main riff and the art of screaming from Led Zeppelin's first album.
Pure punk rage permeates the most personal tracks, such as Sleepwalk Capsules and Cosmonaut, barely touched by melodies that, duely developed would be the envy of Green Day. Unpredictable dynamic and frequent tempo shifts (for proof check the dance beat and the lambada break in Enfilade) enhance the listening experience, while the band also displays good theatrical skills with the lengthy psychodramas Invalid Litter Dept and Quarantined and even a ballad, Non-zero Possibility.

This Station is Non-Operational (2005) is an At The Drive In career retrospective.

At The Drive-in, proventienti da El Paso (Texas), hanno cominciato a suonare nel 1994. I loro primi singoli Hell Paso e Alfaro Vive (Western Breed 1995), come pure l’ EP El Gran Orgo (Offtime 1997), mostrano un crossover rap-punk inspirato ai Rage Against The Machine ma con un altro più evidente approccio hardcore. L’album In Casino Out (Fearless 1998) e l’EP Vaja (Fearless 1999) completano la maturazione della formazione con Cedric Bixler al canto, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez e Jim Ward alle chitarre, Paul Himojos al basso e Toni Haijar alla batteria. Nell’album Relationship of Command (Grand Royal 2000) una produzione più professionale ha aiutato a tirare fuori la ferocia senza sacrificare l’arte. Qui si possono facilmente verificare le influenze del quintetto. Arcarsenal prende quota tra percussioni tribali e stridori di chitarra con una combinazione basso-chitarra che ricorda i Guns N’ Roses e con vocalismi fradici della follia enfatica tipica degli MC5. Il rappato di Pattern Against User suona più come una della tirate di Jello Biafra. One Armed Scissor prende in prestito il riff principale e l’arte dell’urlo dal primo album dei Lep Zeppelin. Di pura rabbia punk sono permeate le tracce più originali, come Sleepwalk Capsules e Cosmonaut, appena toccate da melodie che dovutamente sviluppate potrebbero far invidia ai Green Day. Imprevedibilità dinamica e frequenti cambi di tempo (si provi a verificare la ritmica dance e lo squarcio di lambada in Enfilade) intensificano l’esperienza d’ascolto mentre il complesso dimostra anche buone qualità teatrali coi lenti psicodrammi Invalid Litter Dept e Quarantined e anche con una ballata, Non-zero Possibility.

Featuring the Red Hot Chili Peppers' bassist "Flea", Mars Volta's De-loused In The Comatorium (Universal, 2003), represented a vast technical improvement over At The Drive In, the original band of chameleon-like vocalist Cedric Bixler Zavala and energetic guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. It is an ambitious and creative work, penned by ambitious and creative musicians, that reinvents prog-rock for the post-emo generation.
The most "regular" song is perhaps Inertiatic ESP, torn by punk spasms. Announced by the brief overture of Son Et Lumiere (a riff that emerges from shapeless radio noise and guitar strumming) Inertiatic ESP boasts versatile and powerful vocals, that range from operatic to rap, and a hysterical guitar, that engages in a vast repertory of styles. Quasi-thrash drumming and lugubrious distorted organ pulses fuel this four-minute manifesto.
The seven-minute Roulette Dares boasts an even stronger melody, bordering on the melodramatic standard of Broadway show tunes or of Queen despite the hardcore impetus and the epileptic fits that are worthy of Led Zeppelin's Communication Breakdown.
Emphatic vocals and videogame-like guitar doodling propel the eight-minute excursion of Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt.
Possibly the album's zenith occurs with the frenzied and virtuoso playing of another seven-minute piece, Drunkship of Lanterns, the prototype for Mars Volta's Latin-metal fusion. A close competitor in terms of technical prowess is the 12-minute Cicatriz ESP, that boasts three simultaneous guitar solos (John Frusciante on the third guitar), reminiscent of Neil Young and the Grateful Dead in their most acid moments, although the piece itself drags on a bit too long and a bit too magniloquent.
The collage-like structures and haphazard dynamics of the best songs define Mars Volta's disorienting praxis. The codas are often the most interesting part of the song (sonically speaking), micro-concertos of sound effects (the brief instrumental Tira Me a las Aranas is basically just a coda, and a superb example of psychedelic tapestry). Their typical song always seems to spiral out of control.
On the downside, a few of these songs are the classic "much ado about nothing". For example, Eriatarka is a soft ballad with Led Zeppelin-ian tension, replete with sudden bursts of hard-rock riffs and grand guitar melodies. And Televators is nothing but a power-ballad in disguise.

In the meantime, Jim Ward formed Sparta with guitarist Paul Hinojos and drummer Tony Hajjar. They released the single Cut Your Ribbon, the EP Austere (2002), which includes the catchy Mye, and the albums Wiretap Scars (Dreamworks, 2002), opened by the virulent Cut Your Ribbon, and Porcelain (Geffen, 2004), with the grungey Guns Of Memorial Park and Death In The Family, and Threes (2006), the first album with Keeley Davis on guitar, neither offering a terribly original variation on At The Drive In's emo-core. They are basically the alter-ego of Mars Volta: moving towards melodic, simplified structures instead of intricate, convoluted structures.

At The Drive In's guitarist Jarrett Wrenn and keyboardist Kenny Hopper formed Crime in Choir, that also features synth-man Jesse Reiner and guitarist Carson McWhirter, and released a work of ethereal prog-rock, The Hoop (Frenetic, 2004).

Perhaps the only hard-rock band to be truly unique (and sonically transgressive) in 2005, Mars Volta, having incorporated bassist Juan Alderete, delivered Frances The Mute (Universal, 2005), an album that matched and surpassed the art-pomp of its predecessor. With their first album Mars Volta had tried to balance the urge to exhibit their astronomical technical skills with the desire to be actually understood by the audience. On the second album they largely ignored the audience. The songs are (much) longer and a lot less melodic. They rely on cryptic, neurotic, elongated structures. They do more than just "deconstruct" known archetypes and genres. The endings, in particular, often sound like philosophical treatises.
The intricate, non-linear art of the first album is bent to more spectacular ends. Each piece is a cascade of complex but incoherent fragments that generates a brutally disjointed but viscerally effective stream of consciousness, Each of the five tracks is basically an album in itself, made of several sub-tracks that often collide with their neighbors instead of segueing smoothly from and into them.
Furthermore, Theodore's drumming, Rodriguez's guitar, and Bixler's vocals seem to embody all the technical progress of the last two decades, from Red Hot Chili Peppers to Phish, from Korn to System Of A Down, as if progressive-rock (reincarnated in Mars Volta) was attempting to catch up with all relevant styles developed after its heyday.
The dizzying experience of dissecting these colossal tracks is enough to swallow much of the recent history of rock music like a black hole in waiting. It doesn't mean that everything is essential: one can easily argue that each track could have been trimmed down to make it more pleasant. It would have also helped focus on the fragments that truly matter, many of which are left in the air without a sensible development or ending.
Despite the amount of details, nothing seems to happen by accident. Even the distant guitar that opens Cygnus Vismund Cygnus sounds like a metaphor, not just a cute sound effect. The 13-minute piece itself is a continuation of Mars Volta's Latin-metal fusion/fission program. After four minutes of pure frenzy, the guitar intones a jagged jazzy solo (sort of Peter Green for the age of hyper-neurosis). Then the loud emphatic staccato tumult restarts. As it is often the case, the (four-minute) coda is another case of metaphorical albeit undecipherable art, a collage of sound effects that hardly relates to the song that preceded it.
By the same token, the musique-concrete coda of the brief (by these standards) The Widow contrasts with the melodramatic tone and Hendrix-ian guitar of the tune itself.
L'Via l'Viaquez instead well documents how Mars Volta che turn the cheesiest of themes into an avantgarde piece. It starts out as the most tedious of Latin-pop songs. After three minutes it slows down into a sleepy cha-cha intermezzo. Then a soaring heavy-metal guitar brings back the tune. After a chaotic instrumental break, the vocals repeat the melody. But the context keeps changing, shifting from sensual whisper to Caribbean vibraphone. The song is basically twelve minutes of variations over a silly leitmotiv.
A four-minute introduction of alien hisses and wails sets the tone for Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore, a suite in four movements (by the mysterious titles of Vade Mecum, Pour Another Icepick, Pisacis, Con Safo). Then a funereal horn fanfare and Bixler's oneiric lullaby create a melancholy atmosphere that suddenly explodes in a melodramatic crescendo. Sparse horns dominate the implosion that follows. For a few minutes only disjointed fragments of sound emerge from the fog. Unlike the previous tracks, the coda of this one is not a disintegration of the tune but a reconstitution of the tune, a slow paradisiac reprise.
They break the pattern again with the 32-minute suite Cassandra Gemini, the only one to open straight with the main rhythmic/guitar/vocal pattern. Hardcore frenzy and pop calm alternate to shape a power ballad with bluesy overtones a` la Led Zeppelin's How Many More Times. This narrative juggernaut collapses into pure instrumental and vocal agony, as a symphonic crescendo parallels passionate soul-jazz-blues vocals. The complex guitar interplay of the second part lifts the kammerspiel up one more (metaphysical) orbit, or pulls it down one more layer towards the bottom of (psychic) hell. The coda is the non-plus-ultra of Mars Volta's semiotic madness, blending Karlheinz Stockhausen's electronic maelstroms and Albert Ayler's free-jazz mayhems.

Il chitarrista Omar Rodriguez-Lopez e il cantante Cedric Bixler formano i DeFacto e quindi i Mars Volta, un gurppo più progressive outfit, che debuttano con l'EP Tremulant (Gold Standard Labs, 2001). De-loused In The Comatorium (Universal, 2003), ospite Flea al basso, è un lavoro ambizioso e creativo, realizzato da musicisti ambiziosi e creativi, che reinventa il prog-rock per la generazione post-emo.
L'unica traccia che suona come il prog-rock classico è Eriatarka (6:20), ma anche le lunghe escursioni Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt (8:41) e Cicatriz Esp (12:28) devono qualcosa al genere. D'altro lato, le strutture collagistiche e le dinamiche casuali di Roulette Dares (7:30) sono tipiche della prassi disorientante dei Mars Volta, delle loro canzoni che sempre sembrano dover sfuggire dal controllo. Probabilmente lo zenith dell'album è nella caotica e virtuosa Drunkship of Lanterns (7:05), e nei tre simultanei assolo di chitarra di Cicatriz ESP (con John Frusciante alla terza chitarra). L'unica canzone regolare è Inertiatic ESP, strappata da spasmi punk.

(Translation by/ Tradotto da (Laura Lo Coco)

I Mars Volta, probabilmente il solo gruppo rock ad essere nel 2005 veramente unico (e musicalmente trasgressivo), ha pubblicato Frances The Mute (Universal, 2005), un album che ha raggiunto e superato lo sfarzo artistico del suo predecessore. L’unica differenza è che qui la band ha cercato di bilanciare la necessità di esibire le proprie astronomiche capacità tecniche con il desiderio di essere veramente capita dal pubblico.

L’intricata e sconnessa arte del primo album approda a più spettacolari conclusioni, con risultati misti: invece che ad un flusso di coscienza brutalmente sconnesso ma visceralmente efficace, ci si ritrova di fronte ad una sequenza di frammenti, completi ma incoerenti. Ognuno dei cinque pezzi è fondamentalmente un album di per sé, costituito da numerose sotto-tracce che spesso collidono con quelle vicine invece di integrarsi, seguire e incorporarsi da e verso queste.

La batteria di Theodore, la chitarra di Rodriguez e la voce di Bixler sembrano inglobare tutti i progressi tecnici degli ultimi vent’anni, dai Red Hot Chili Peppers ai Phish, dai Korn ai System Of A Down, come se il progressive-rock (che i Mars Volta incarnano), dal momento in cui ha raggiunto il suo apice, avesse cercato di catturare e legarsi ad ogni stile che si fosse sviluppato ed affermato successivamente.

La vertiginosa esperienza della cruda Cygnus Vismund Cygnus e la lunghissima (30 minuti) Cassandra Gemini sono sufficienti ad inglobare la maggior parte della recente storia del rock, come un buco nero in potenza. Questo non significa che tutto è perfettamente necessario e perfettamente essenziale: si sarebbe potuto facilmente sostenere che ogni canzone poteva essere snellita perché fosse più incisiva. Avrebbe anche aiutato concentrare gli sforzi artistici su quei frammenti più importanti, molti dei quali sono lasciati a mezz’aria, senza un vero e proprio sviluppo e senza una conclusione adeguata.

The addition of John Frusciante on Amputechture (Universal, 2006) did not benefit Mars Volta. The 17-minute Tetragrammaton is ten (meandering) minutes too long and the rest is cliched prog-rock that satisfies neither the arena crowds nor the intellectual elite. What differentiates this version of Mars Volta from their forefathers King Crimson and Yes is the jazz and Latin accents. But that is too little to justify the sprawling instrumental vanity of the group.

L'entrata nel gruppo di John Frusciante su Amputechture (Universal 2006) non ha giovato ai Mars Volta. Tetragrammaton dura 17 minuti, 10 minuti (di divagazioni) di troppo e il resto Š un prog rock ricco di clichŠ che non soddisfa ne il pubblico dei palazzetti ne l'elite intelletuale. Quello che differenzia i Mars Volta dai loro avi King Crimson e Yes sono le influenze Jazz e latine. Ma Š troppo poco per giustificarne la scomposta vanit… strumentale.

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's solo mostly-instrumental project, usually referred to as the Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Quintet, that debuted with Omar Rodriguez (2005), leans towards Miles Davis' atmospheric jazz-funk-rock fusion (the 17-minute Jacob Van Lennepkade, dedicated to the namesake Amsterdam canal). The live 25-minute EP Please Heat This Eventually (2007) is a collaboration with Damo Suzuki of Can. Se Dice Bisonte No Bufalo (2007) is the first of the four albums that Rodriguez recorded in 2005, and it includes the studio version of Please Heat This Eventually without Suzuki's vocals.

Mars Volta's bassist Juan Alderete launched his project Big Sir (featuring vocalist Lisa Paipneau) with Big Sir (2001) and Und Die Scheibe Andert Sichimmer (2006), that wed soul, funk and hip-hop influences with the ethos of alternative rock.

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