Mars Volta “Amputechture”

Album Reviews | Apr 5th, 2007

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Record Label: Universal Records
Genre: Weird Rock
Band Link: link
Buy on Amazon.com link

Whoa, these songs are long! Clocking in at over an hour and fifteen minutes long is the latest eight track album from the Mars Volta, Amputechture. Actually having a song that is over sixteen minutes long is weird enough, but wait till you hear it, you won’t believe your ears when you come to realize how poorly you just spent the last quarter hour of your life.

A large part of the beginning of the first track, “Vicarious Atonement” is a lot of guitar noise, after about three minutes it is coupled with ghastly, choppy vocals. To perfectly describe it, it sounds creepy and is an automatic turn off to the rest of the album because it sounds downright weird. Once “Tetragrammaton” kicks in, it does so with a jolt, but is just more noise, this time lasting for over sixteen minutes! The vocal melody sounds like it was written for a completely different song, it simply does not fit and sounds crowded and confusing. Things calm down a bit by the third track, “Vermicide”
which is at least listen-able, but it sounds like what it must feel like to be on drugs in an alternate universe*.

(*Note: The reviewer was unable to finish this piece since she killed herself somewhere during track 6… that’s right, she even sat through the Spanish language track; we think it was the breaking point).

Bottom Line: This album is too weird to get through.
Notable Tracks: none
Overall Rating: