The Mars Volta Information

The Mars Volta is the creative partnership formed in 2001 between bandleader/composer/guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and lyricist/vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala. The Mars Volta's first recorded output was the three-song Tremulant EP, released April 2002 on the Gold Standard Laboratories label. De-Loused In The Comatorium, the first full-length album by The Mars Volta, was released in June 2003. Produced by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Rick Rubin, De-Loused In The Comatorium served as a celebration of the life of Julio Venegas, a local artist who had been a mentor to Omar and Cedric during their youth in El Paso, Texas, before committing suicide in 1996. De-Loused established The Mars Volta creative template: Omar writing, arranging and musically directing every note, and Cedric distilling every lyric and vocal melody from a story he'd written inspired by Venegas: a story in which fictional protagonist Cerpin Taxt falls into a coma following a botched suicide attempt, experiences fantastic adventures in his dreams, epic battles between the good and bad aspects of his conscience, and ultimately emerges from the coma--only to succeed in taking his own life. Omar and Cedric's musical and lyrical creation was expressed on De-Loused with the help of keyboardist Isaiah Ikey Owens, drummer Jon Theodore, sound manipulator Jeremy Ward, as well as Flea and John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The Mars Volta's second album, Frances The Mute was released in March 2005. While similarly inspired by the memory of a dear departed friend, Frances was by no means a "sequel" to 2003's De-Loused. Where De-Loused was a finite sci-fi narrative that took place entirely in an imaginary universe created for the story, Frances would transpire in the real world, inspired by a diary found by late bandmate Jeremy Ward (R.I.P.) and the similarity of the anonymous author's life to his own. Frances The Mute was named for the biological mother who is the object of protagonist Cygnus' quest--a story roughly and (deliberately) vaguely ...