THE MARS VOLTA

Quantum Entanglement and the Unseen Muse
Even if you are ready for it, what seems like half a second before you press play, The Bedlam in Goliath screams to life: "HAVE YOU SEEN THE LIVING, TIRED OF THEIR OWN SHELLS!" The fourth studio album from the unclassifiable, jazz-infused / Latin-influenced / progressive / experimental rock group, The Mars Volta has a sound that can only be described as otherworldly. As if their previous efforts didn't already dive head-first (almost literally) into death-related themes, depending on who you ask, Bedlam has... numerous hands touching, if not in direct contact with some unseen influences. During a trip to Jerusalem, Omar Rodriguez Lopez, guitarist and leader of The Mars Volta, picked up an antique Ouija-style talking board and brought it back to singer-lyricist, Cedric Bixler Zavala. Unknowingly, they unraveled the story of a sordid love triangle between a mother, daughter and an abusive man who collectively referred to themselves as Goliath. Entranced by the story, Cedric found inspiration in the tale and began incorporating passages, phrases and names into the lyrics and song titles for their newest album. Creative, passionate, and completely uncompromising, the masterminds behind The Mars Volta, Cedric and Omar are determined to create albums that sound nothing like their predecessors and will do just about everything to do so, even if it means knocking on a few unwelcome doors. Armed with a new drummer, a blind devotion to their creative vision and thousands of loyal fans, The Mars Volta is about to unleash an epidemic onto the world. That is, if you believe everything The Soothsayer tells you.

In the liner notes for Amputechture (2006), The Mars Volta is described as a musical partnership between Cedric Bixler Zavala and Omar Rodriguez Lopez and that The Mars Volta Group plays the compositions. Can you explain the reasoning for this type of arrangement?
Cedric: Well Omar is the main leader; he's the spine and glue behind the band. Like a year into the band being a band we started doing it that way. So we just took everything by the roots really and decided to get rid of the whole idiotic notion of there being a democracy in the band.
Omar: We learned our lesson long ago by trying to have a fake democracy, which most groups try to have. We learned that in the end you just have compromised art and that both parties think it's OK and nobody says "that sounds fuckin' awesome, that's exactly what I want." So we learned from that experience and it's made it so that we love what we do and if we end up not liking it,we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Creatively, what inspires you? What drives you?
Omar: Everything. This is how we understand ourselves in the context of the world. Whether it's a nice film or a nice conversation or being embarrassed in a grocery store and you trip and you fall on your face... all of these things are inspiration for what ends up in the music.
Cedric: Well it really depends. From novelists to moviemakers to kind of some of the unsung heroes from the '80s as far as the skateboarding world goes. I had a lot of pictures of Mark Gonzales in my vocal booth while I was tracking because he reminds me of what I think the modern skateboarder should be, which is sort of like this mutated Basquiat on four wheels. If it's got soul and we can recognize it, it's got soul and we'll recognize it.

There are essentially nine members of The Mars Volta. What does one need on their musical résumé to be in the band?
Cedric: They need to be sharp and on their toes about recording material, like getting material 10 minutes before you go in the studio and then playing it right there. Also, what's required is blind faith in our leadership.

The recording process seemed to be cursed. How did The Mars Volta manage to overcome these obstacles?
Cedric: I had to convince everyone not to give up. I played the board a lot by myself and I think it used the closest flesh around me as an example. So I had this notion that since it wasn't affecting me directly that I could convince everyone around me to go through with it. A lot of convincing that there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

There are essentially nine members of The Mars Volta. What does one need on their musical résumé to be in the band?
Cedric: They need to be sharp and on their toes about recording material, like getting material 10 minutes before you go in the studio and then playing it right there. Also, what's required is blind faith in our leadership.

The album art for De-Loused... and Frances... was done by the legendary Storm Thorgerson specifically for those records, but on Amputechture you used existing pieces by Jeff Jordan. Was the art for Bedlam... created solely for this album?
Omar: These were created by Jeff for the album and he finished these pieces even before we finished the album. We sat with Jeff before we went to record this album and gave him demos but we didn't tell him anything about The Soothsayer and clearly he got his own image of exactly what we were going through because to me, the art couldn't reflect more the record if we had told him everything.

You guys intended on releasing this album in order to somewhat relieve the band of some unseen burden. How do you feel about some of your fans that might take it upon themselves to use Ouija boards to try to summon Goliath?
Omar: At first there was a discussion that this was our experience and why don't we just invent something to tell people what it's about to throw them off the track. But I don't know why it didn't even occur to us that the young people that are very impressionable and very naïve would try and do things like that. But for me, I think what they're doing is in vain because I feel like by actually completing the record we just sealed this thing once and for all, but maybe I'm completely wrong.

What is The Mars Volta not ready to admit?
Cedric: Defeat.
Omar: Defeat? Yeah. That's a good one. We'll die fighting for what we believe in so I guess that's a good thing that we're not ready to admit.