Towards the end of the concert when The Mars Volta playing their catchiest song, “Televators”, from their first album “Deloused In The Comatorium”, which was released twenty years ago to the day, the crowded Verti Music Hall in Berlin seems to finally take off. The younger fans at the front, some of whom had traveled hundreds of kilometers, as you could hear in the crowd, roared their hearts out. In the back of the stands, where the rather well-fed audience is sitting – smartly dressed Mitte couples, rock veterans who have seen a lot or everything – suddenly rows of people jump out of their chairs, get into ecstasy, sing the line for line with. A woman in a summer dress ecstatically stretches her arms towards the ceiling for several minutes, dancing herself into a kind of trance, as if at a religious awakening.
There aren’t many live bands in 2023 that evoke such reactions from viewers. The intensity of the sound of The Mars Volta, the singular mixture of hardcore, prog rock and salsa, is able to do this – reinforced by the longing that has been building up in the fans after the band’s break of more than ten years. So she finally finds fulfilment.
Vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López, the remaining core of The Mars Volta, released a new album last year and are now touring with four musicians, led by stunning jazz drummer Linda-Philomène Tsoungui astonished. With unbelievable speed and virtuosity she duels in the improvised intermediate passages of the songs with the guitar of Omar Rodríguez, the Jimi Hendrix of the 21st century.
Since the beginning of their acclaimed hardcore band At the drive in Since the late 1990s, Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López have traveled a long, tortuous route. Their sound was already recognizable by the names that were on the backs of the records over the past 25 years: At first only “Cedric” and “Omar”, the first names of a grandiose but genre-true US hardcore band. Then first part of the Mexican and Puerto Rican surnames was added, later the second, maternal part.
Especially the older songs merge into one another in thunderstorms of feedback and percussion
So the way of the Mars Volta founders is the way back to their Latin American origins. And the uniqueness of the music that in a moment like fugazi sounds like in the next Led Zeppelin, the next but one like Larry Harlow’s salsa and then like a synthesis of everything, bears witness to that decision. It’s not for nothing that the Puerto Rican flag hangs over Omar Rodríguez’ guitar cabinet at every performance.
The new, self-titled Mars Volta record caused astonishment last year because it contains a series of unusually short and concise songs instead of the exuberant compositions of the previous albums. It’s as if Rodríguez and Bixler, after twenty years of expanding their musical radius, had suddenly thought of an essence of sound that sounds both sovereign and touching at the same time. Unfortunately, the band only played two songs from this fantastic record in Berlin – perhaps because they are less suitable for the improvisations that are so important on stage. Maybe also because Mars Volta want to present a cross-section of their work after a decade of absence and for the anniversary of their debut album.
With the older songs stretching to a quarter of an hour, which merge into one another in thunderstorms of feedback and percussion, the concert sometimes threatens to get out of joint. The competition between guitar and drums, reminiscent of sporting performances, briefly leads to those feelings of fatigue and being overwhelmed that prog rock shows have always triggered. But then Mars Volta suddenly remember their punk past. Omar Rodríguez jumps out of nowhere into a dissonant guitar staccato, and the reactions are, well, see above.
Another date: June 26, Mannheim, with Red Hot Chili Peppers and Iggy Pop