The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium? WhuaTF!?

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After glancing through some of the list threads on Musicianforum, I noticed that some obscure (to me at least) albums keep getting mad props from the locals.
So, whats the big big deal with these:

The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium
Explosions in the Sky - The Earth is Not a Cold, Dead Place
Coheed and Cambria - Second Stage Turbine Blade
At the Drive in - Relationship of Command
A Perfect Cirle - Mer de Noms

Whua!?
I'm Lost. Why all the critical acclaim? School Me.
Classics? Duds? Search? Destroy? Say Something Interesting About? What in the Name of All thats Holy?

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 23:25 (twenty-one years ago)

those albums are not obscure.

― cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 23:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Those albums are for nerds/

― Mike Ouderkirk (Mike Ouderkirk), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 23:28 (twenty-one years ago)

those albums are not obscure

oh yes they are to 99.999% of the population.
they are not obscure in the i-am-more-obscuro-than-you-snobby-indie-hell that is ILM (i'm including myself in that description of course!)

― zappi (joni), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 23:32 (twenty-one years ago)

they're not so obscuro either

― paranoia is the hipster's disease (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 23:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Classics? Duds? Search? Destroy?

if this guy knows these terms he should know the fucking search function.

― cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 23:37 (twenty-one years ago)

emo-prog list attack
can i have my mouse click back?

― morris pavilion (samjeff), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 23:38 (twenty-one years ago)

the Mars Volta album featured the worst cover art of the last 50 years. It was defended to me once as being appropriate to the music, which guaranteed that I would never willingly hear the contents.

http://www.blaskan.nu/Bilder/mars_volta_comatorium.jpg

― derrick (derrick), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 23:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Bit late with this, aren't we? Didn't we already have a thread or two devoted to this?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 23:39 (twenty-one years ago)

1. Mars Volta are about as popular as Postal Service, which is pretty popular.

2. The cover is great.

― Cheek0 (Cheek0), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 23:55 (twenty-one years ago)

"Explosions in the Sky - The Earth is Not a Cold, Dead Place"

This is my favorite of this batch, although I always kinda liked that At The Drive-In Record. I was surprised when I went to see "Friday Night Lights" (Billy Bob Thornton football movie currently in theaters) that (a) they used so much Explosions in the Sky music in the film, and (b) it works really, really well.

― Clusterfuck at the Baja Fresh Salsa Bar (Ben Boyer), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 00:06 (twenty-one years ago)

please REMOVE explosions in the sky from the list please pronto
and mars volta were in the major city paper. so yeah, not obscure.

― kephm (kephm), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 00:10 (twenty-one years ago)

That actually doesn't surprise me because EitS soundalikes GY!BE were asked by Oliver Stone to provide music for his football film, "Any Given Sunday". Stone apparently filmed scenes in the movie in sync with certain Godspeed songs (assuming that he'd be able to liscence the songs), and was quite shocked and pissed off that the band refused to let him use the music.
Anyhow, I can certainly envision how such music would heighten the drama in football scenes.
(xpost)

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 00:12 (twenty-one years ago)

emo-prog list attack
emo-PROG? That doesn't compute. I didn't think such a thing could exist. That would be like a disco song with no beat and nothing but police whistles. No wonder I've never heard of any of these acts!

can i have my mouse click back?
(*gives morris pavillion his mouse clock back. And magically cures his carpal tunnel syndrome as pennance.*)

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 00:19 (twenty-one years ago)

TS: ANY GIVEN SUNDAY vs 28 DAYS LATER

― cutty (mcutt), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 00:22 (twenty-one years ago)

lord custos.. you are weird.

― cutty (mcutt), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 00:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Thanks.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 00:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, and I did use the seach function. I didn't find enough info (or at least not the kind I wanted.)
Besides, posting a new thread would be more efficient than reviving a bunch of old ones.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 00:28 (twenty-one years ago)

Yr totally weird, Custos. Perfect Circle gets played hourly on rock radio.

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 00:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Anyway at first I liked Mars Volta and now I really like them, and at first I thought Perfect Circle were merely okay and now I like them.

Instead, can we talk about how the singer from MV sounds really good on the new Handsome Boy Modelling School track w/the RZA?

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 00:45 (twenty-one years ago)

"emo-PROG? That doesn't compute. I didn't think such a thing could exist. That would be like a disco song with no beat and nothing but police whistles. No wonder I've never heard of any of these acts!"

Well you DEFINITELY don't want to hear Coheed and Cambria. EVER.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 04:39 (twenty-one years ago)

That list includes worst ever recorded albums in popular music history.

― The TAO that can be Posted is not the TAO! (The Tao that can be Posted is), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 04:45 (twenty-one years ago)

So, in essense, the populace of the Musiciansforum has, en-masse, cloth ears and rubbish taste?

EmoProg...is this where some bespeckacled twerp with buddy holly glasses and skinny arms dons a fringed silk cape and weeeeeeps about how his Aquatarkus has left him without even saying goooodbyeeeeeee?

And should Billy Corgan take some of the blame for EmoProg?

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 10:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Emo-Prog is a good description of this stuff (exceping EitS) as far as I can see. And basically it sucks bigtime, although "Relationship of Command" is okay. Shitty, tuneless yelping instead of singing. Stupid guitar solos that go on and on. No choruses to speak of. It is the kind of music your ten-year-old kid brother probably thinks is soooooooo cool. Once he would've thought that the Scorpions were soooooooooooo cool--now he thinks that the Mars Volta are etc.

The worst offense of this kind of music are the meaningless yet wordy lyrics delievered with a fevered indignant passion over fevered indignant prog-type music. Also, you can hear the thousands of man-hours and thousands of dollars put into its production. It is the musical equivalent of movies like "Underworld"--in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the Mars Volta had soundtracked that. It has "art" written all over it, but it's like if Regis were to write "Art" all over his ass with lipstick, you wouldn't buy it, right? Basically, this is terrible music. For a long time the way that guys in At the Drive-In made themselves cool was by having huge 'fros. Oh yeah--real cool guys.

Stay away! Buy the Hot Snakes instead.

― mrjosh (mrjosh), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 10:56 (twenty-one years ago)

lord custos, shouldn't you be listening to the sounds of yore?

― cutty (mcutt), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 14:17 (twenty-one years ago)

coheed and cambria, mars volta, at the drive in, and a perfect circle get constant "alternative" radio airplay (a perfect circle being a tool-related side project). It seems to fill the space between the testosterone driven shit they were playing for the past four years and the indie stuff that the people who are now the program directors want to play to appeal to a broader market. explosions in the sky are entirely different and amazing, yes. I'm not sure how they wound up in there. good for them if kids are buying their record though.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 15:24 (twenty-one years ago)

― sometimes i like to pretend i am very small and warm (ex machina), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 15:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Okay, Explosions in the Sky == Good, everybody else == Bad.
So, which EinS tracks/albums should I look for?

lord custos, shouldn't you be listening to the sounds of yore?
All those 12th century instruments and tedious songs about mead and unspoiled maidens annoy the hell out of me. So, no.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 17:04 (twenty-one years ago)

i love the mars volta! ill be seeing them tomrrow in santa cruz!!

― big chaki (chaki), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 18:13 (twenty-one years ago)

DE-LOUSED is based on the true story of their artist/druggie friend, who ran away from the cops, jumped off an overpass into traffic, and ended up in a coma. These are his coma visons--his, dammit, so catch 'em if you can (his as imagined by MV, anyway).Not obscure, but obscurantist, to an extent. Challenging, but not meaning for you to get it all, even if you take the challenge. WTF def. what they're going for. Prog-emo-screamo and more; lots better than most of the acts they remind me of and prob learned from.Art-Rock, not Regis, with "ART" painted on its ass, and surgical mask too: www.villagevoice.com/issues/0346/allred.htp

― don, Wednesday, 20 October 2004 20:39 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah man they are TRUE stories of his COMA VISIONS.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 21:00 (twenty-one years ago)

On a whim, I went to the Mars Volta show at Roseland, NYC, and was surprised to see hundreds of teenage boys all grooving to what these ears would call a free-jazz version of Pearl Jam.

― Loose Translation: Sexy Dancer (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 21:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Um.
I like some free jazz. I'm kinda sorta okay with Pearl Jam.
But mixing them....

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Thursday, 21 October 2004 00:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, right? I'm not saying is was any good, I'm just saying that free-jazz mixed with anything being popular is kinda exciting, if only in the future possibilities of mass acceptance of free music.

― Loose Translation: Sexy Dancer (sexyDancer), Thursday, 21 October 2004 00:15 (twenty-one years ago)

C'mon, Cedric screams way better than Eddie!"True visions" they came up with yeah (he died; don't know if he ever came out of the coma and told 'em anything)

― don, Thursday, 21 October 2004 00:19 (twenty-one years ago)

After a drink, I'll admit they might be closer to a free jazz Jane's Addiction.

― Loose Translation: Sexy Dancer (sexyDancer), Thursday, 21 October 2004 00:22 (twenty-one years ago)

I found the mars volta's official site, tried to download one of *.asx streams ("drunkships of the somethingorother"), but the stream kept crashing.
All I heard was 1/10th of a second long bits of random guitar wash and short yelps of some guy trying to bellow like, I dunno, Bono. or something.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Thursday, 21 October 2004 00:25 (twenty-one years ago)

After another drink, I'll admit they're actually the free jazz Hootie and the Blowfish.

― Loose Translation: Sexy Dancer (sexyDancer), Thursday, 21 October 2004 00:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Okay...THAT would suck.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Thursday, 21 October 2004 00:43 (twenty-one years ago)

(not the being drunk part.)

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Thursday, 21 October 2004 00:43 (twenty-one years ago)

free jazz Jane's Addiction

haha This makes the Mars Volta seem more appealing than they actually are to me. (They're interesting but I didn't hang on to the album.) I can actually see it working as a description though.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Thursday, 21 October 2004 00:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, Jane's's more like it, cos Cedric's voice is high like that. System Of A Down in a blender.

― don, Thursday, 21 October 2004 04:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Stop making them sound so good!

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Thursday, 21 October 2004 04:25 (twenty-one years ago)

(Or maybe SoaD in a blender would just end up as At the Drive-In or something anyway, who are decent but less exciting AFAIK. So maybe I need the pop sensibilities with this sort of wanky rock music?

I dunno, MV seemed to be drawing on Zeppelin and Rush and 70s fusion and maybe Jane's and Fugazi and Shudder to Think and Radiohead and Tool, all of whom I like to varying degrees. But I didn't really click with their results, not enough to keep the album anyway. I don't know if it's just that I didn't get from them the locking interplay that all those artists - well maybe not R-head as much - have. Or that I just didn't get the compositional structuring or improv connection. With this sort of ultra-bombastic concept album, where the concept is fundamentally ridiculous, there has to be something in the music to make you buy into the concept or at least overlook it, and maybe that just wasn't there? Or maybe I just didn't get with the emo elements, since prog's aged better than emo for me? Maybe I should have just kept it longer?

BTW what's with "Geddy Lee parody" becoming such a popular vocal style on modern rock radio these days?)

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Thursday, 21 October 2004 04:36 (twenty-one years ago)

It means that Brian Molko was the John the Baptist of his time.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 21 October 2004 04:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Didn't know you thought that highly of Geddy, Ned!;)

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Thursday, 21 October 2004 04:57 (twenty-one years ago)

god the show i saw in santa cruz the other day kicked my ass!

jon is the best rock drummer in the world. cedric put on a few pounds.

cant wait to hear the new shit!

― big chaki (chaki), Monday, 25 October 2004 16:16 (twenty-one years ago)

jon is the best rock drummer in the world

This is a true statement.

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 25 October 2004 16:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Didn't know you thought that highly of Geddy, Ned!;)

I thought I made it clear I was a Rush fan!

I heard a lot of people complaining about the MV opening set on Saturday in Irvine for the Pixies but frankly I wouldn't have minded seeing them again. I don't think I'm a hyperfan by any means but they do have something.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 25 October 2004 16:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Sundar, since you're still wondering, why not go get a cheapo used copy, mine was only like 9.99 new (or download it somewhere). Yeah all those bands you mentioned to do pertain (I meantioned some more in the review listed above). Can't guarantee it'll grow on you, but seems like it and you might have growth potential on each other. (Omar's solo album got a worse review in Nov. SPIN than MV did I think)(but it'sSPIN yknow). The TREMULANT EP was pretty good too, though uneven.(DE-LOUSED is uneven too, but overall it works. Most of the stuff I like goes out on a limb far enough to be uneven). Haven't heard any of their live stuff.

― don, Monday, 25 October 2004 19:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Like I've said before, De-loused grew on me a lot, but it really clicked after I heard their live ep (Live & Cheap, I think it's called, it was like $6).

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 25 October 2004 20:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Omar's solo album is hella cool.

― stevie (stevie), Monday, 25 October 2004 20:26 (twenty-one years ago)

I had a dream last night that I got Cedric's home address. I dont know wtf my problem is.

― still bevens (bscrubbins), Monday, 25 October 2004 20:26 (twenty-one years ago)

I know Ned. I just didn't realize you ranked him as a modern-day Jesus Christ;)

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Monday, 25 October 2004 22:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Thing is, I don't like that much stuff by any of the bands they seem to have been influenced by (except Zep). But a band that drags me out of my rut, past my usual interests/tastes/prejudices, *that's* the band I'm looking for. (Aside from my usual interests, of course, which tend toward the punk.) Ghost's HYPNOTIC UNDERWORLD is another example. Still have to fast fwd past track one, but the rest is a triumph of per-fectly timed/executed arty moony neo-hippieshit!

― don, Tuesday, 26 October 2004 01:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Erf, never mind, I tried a joke and it looks bitchy or something now.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 03:44 (twenty-one years ago)

(a comradely, fellow-fan-ly joke, like).

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 03:49 (twenty-one years ago)

I know Ned. I just didn't realize you ranked him as a modern-day Jesus Christ;)

And he shall come from the North
And maple leaves will he bear
But the trees can't help their feeling
If they like the way they're made

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 26 October 2004 03:51 (twenty-one years ago)

I haven't heard Coheed & Cambria's whole album, haven't heard Explosions In The Sky at all. Please tell me about them!

― Don, Wednesday, 27 October 2004 01:22 (twenty-one years ago)

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