Review: The Mars Volta – Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacio (2025)

Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacio is The Mars Volta’s ninth studio album.

The Mars Volta is a band that was born out of a desire to break boundaries. When guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala left the post-hardcore band At the Drive-In after its third album, they wanted to make music where the length, structure, and expressive boldness of the songs would not be an obstacle but a starting point. Strong Latin influences joined jazz, psychedelic rock, and progressive rock, and all this was made possible by The Mars Volta, founded in 2001.

The band’s debut EP, Tremulant, was already a promising calling card, but the real breakthrough came with their debut album, De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003). Produced by Rick Rubin, the album was a huge leap forward: a conceptual, chaotic, and dramatic whole, in which long songs, an aggressive attitude, and virtuoso playing merged into a breathtaking narrative arc. The album sold over half a million copies and quickly became a landmark of modern progressive rock – a rare occurrence; it was music that was undeniably prog, but at the same time it was also an album that was cool to like.

After De-Loused, the band released five albums, with their sound becoming increasingly experimental and louder. At the same time, internal tensions, constant lineup changes, and Rodríguez-López’s creative energy being spread across various projects weakened the duo’s collaboration. By 2012, their creative relationship had effectively collapsed, and Bixler-Zavala announced the end of the band in early 2013.

Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala

In 2022, however, Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala reunited, and The Mars Volta returned to both the stage and the studio. After a long hiatus, the subsequent comeback albums have shown that chaos has gradually given way to a calmer and more thoughtful expression.

Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacío (”Dirty Profit; Eyes of Emptiness”) continues this development convincingly. The band is known above all for its aggressively rumbling, multi-layered, and chaotic music, but on this album, the focus is clearly different.

Eighteen relatively short tracks form a seamless whole, with the tracks flowing into each other without any clear breaks. This is clearly a concept album, even though its narrative side may remain somewhat obscure—at least if the listener, like myself, has never considered carefully analyzing The Mars Volta’s lyrics to be a primary condition for listening. The atmosphere carries the album, and that’s enough. Immersing oneself in the lyrics can be left for later years.

Read also: Review: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum – Of The Last Human Being (2024)

Although the album’s unified song structure refers to the deep end of progressive rock, it also contains some of the band’s most pop-oriented moments. Some of the songs are dreamlike, ethereally beautiful art rock, reminiscent of Mew or Radiohead rather than the chaotic outbursts of early Mars Volta. At times, the music sounds confusingly like late 1970s Genesis meets Aphex Twin, spiced up with some Latin-inspired jazz. The song ”Cue the Sun,” which has a recurring theme throughout the album, is reminiscent of Phil Collins’s early 1980s solo work—albeit with a slightly more offbeat approach.

Despite these comparisons, the whole still sounds very original, and it is wonderful how seamlessly the band’s musical journey unfolds this time around. It is like a feverish psychedelic dream that, following its own twisted logic, floats from calm moments to stormier ones in an irresistibly delightful way. And although there are references to pop music, it’s worth noting that these mainly refer to the album’s soft and inviting soundscape and a few truly catchy choruses. However, most of the songs on the album completely abandon the familiar verse/chorus structures of pop music and instead rely on the aforementioned dreamlike and probably very intuitively created developments in which the atmosphere, textures, and sounds are more important than the worn-out logic of pop.

Synthesizers with a 1980s glow take center stage, with guitars remaining a clear secondary element. Josh Moreau’s warm, low-rumbling bass guitar, on the other hand, is given plenty of space – and even takes on a solo role at times – forming a tasty counterpoint to the bright synths and Bixler-Zavala’s soaring vocals. Leo Genovese’s saxophone improvisations add a jazzy organic feel to the otherwise cool soundscape, and familiar Latin percussion brings polyrhythmic energy beneath the ethereal surface. Bixler-Zavala sings (the lyrics are sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish) perhaps more beautifully than ever: falsetto, echoes, and effects make the voice hauntingly captivating.

Read also:

Judging by reactions on the internet, it seems that Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacio, packaged in minimalist cardboard sleeve, has really angered many old The Mars Volta fans. So be it. For me, it’s The Mars Volta’s most satisfying album since De-Loused in the Comatorium. In fact—and I know this will make a few jaws drop—it may well be the band’s best album. Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala clearly have faith in the album; they have refused to give interviews about it, but The Mars Volta surprised their fans by performing the album in its entirety at concerts even before its release.

More than 25 years after its founding, The Mars Volta still refuses to stick to its formula. Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacío is the most surprising prog pop gem of the year: an album where accessibility and bold avant-garde experimentation come together in a way that is almost impossible to pull off with dignity, but this time The Mars Volta succeeds with flying colors.

Best tracks: ”Reina Tormenta”, ”Enlazan las tinieblas”, ”Cue The Sun”, ”Celaje”, ”Un Disparo al Vacío”, ”Lucro Sucio”

Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Read also: Review: Tool – Fear Inoculum (2019)

Tracks

  1. ”Fin” 1:14
  2. ”Reina Tormenta” 1:10
  3. ”Enlazan las Tinieblas” 3:12
  4. ”Mictlán” 2:33
  5. The Iron Rose” 3:48
  6. ”Cue the Sun”v2:16
  7. ”Alba del Orate”v3:12
  8. ”Voice in My Knives” 2:41
  9. ”Poseedora de Mi Sombra” 2:47
  10. ”Celaje” 3:48
  11. ”Vociferó” 2:28
  12. ”Mito de los Trece Cielos” 1:05
  13. ”Un Disparo al Vacío” 3:31
  14. ”Detrás de la Puerta Dorada” 0:29
  15. ”Maullidos” 2:56
  16. ”Morgana” 3:05
  17. ”Cue the Sun (Reprise)” 3:29
  18. ”Lucro Sucio” 5:44

The Mars Volta

Omar Rodríguez-López: synths, guitars Cedric Bixler-Zavala: vocals Marcel Rodríguez-López: synths, keyboards, percussion Linda-Philomène Tsoungui: drums Leo Genovese: keyboards, saxophone Josh Moreau: bass guitar

Additional musicians

Daniel Diaz: perkussiot Eva Gardner: bassokitara Willy Rodriguez: rummut

Producer: Omar Rodríguez-López
Label: Clouds Hill

Jätä kommentti

Website Built with WordPress.com.

Ylös ↑