The Mars Volta

Breaking a decade of omertà, The Mars Volta reawaken from their lengthy hiatus with an eponymous album that radically reshapes their paradigm.

After the group fell silent, a legion of devotees (including Kanye West) kept up an insistent drumbeat for their return. The new album shakes loose some of The Mars Volta's long-standing shibboleths, with only two tracks lasting longer than four minutes, and the dizzying, abrasive prog stylings of earlier albums absent. Instead, The Mars Volta pulses with subtle brilliance, Caribbean rhythms underpinning sophisticated, turbulent songcraft.

This is The Mars Volta at their most mature, most concise, most focused. Their sound and fury channelled to greatest effect, The Mars Volta finds Rodríguez-López's subterranean pop melodies driving Bixler-Zavala's dark sci-fi tales of the occult and malevolent governments. Distilling all the passion, poetry and power at their fingertips, The Mars Volta is the most accessible music the group has ever recorded.