Metro Reviews Amputechture

Wahey! Amputechture is in my sweaty palm.

Was surprised to see a review of Amputechture in Metro today:

Alt-rock renegades The Mars Volta's last two albums weren't just ruminations on the suicides of two contemporaries (their mentor Julio Venegas and ex-member Jeremy Ward), they were unassailable behemoths wielding mallets of funk-prog, Latino metal and ambient jazz. One track on their last album took an excruciating 33 minutes. Instead of one narrative, composer Omar Rodriquez-Lopez and man-on-the-brink vocalist Cedric Bixler -Zavala pack Amputechture with a series of guitar-blitzkrieging brass-swirling reminiscences from their El Paso youth. And that's overwhelmingly for the good. Although Bixler-Zavala's lyrical allusions to brains, insects and substance abuse remain as cryptic as ever, this is their tightest record to date; its 75 minutes spin by deceptively quickly, and the bilingual funk of Viscera Eyes and Vermicide are even obvious candidates for singles. It's hardly an instant listen, but preserverance is rewarded with a blood-rushing ridethat's less proggy-promp wizardy, more Sergio Leone-meets-miami Vice.

Nadine McBay