Be-gone all you post-Comatorium Volta Haters

I like all TMV's albums, but I do think they've suffered a decline in quality since FTM. I think it would serve Omar well to take some time off. I respect his trying to be very prolific, but it doesn't seem to be working all to well for him. Putting out 80 mins of music every year is hard even for the best. (Unless you're John Zorn)

Moatilliatta wrote: Equality 7-2521 wrote: I like all TMV's albums, but I do think they've suffered a decline in quality since FTM. I think it would serve Omar well to take some time off. I respect his trying to be very prolific, but it doesn't seem to be working all to well for him. Putting out 80 mins of music every year is hard even for the best. (Unless you're John Zorn)   I agree to a certain extent. Omar needs to quit doing solo projects. They are wasting his and our time. Writing an amazing 70-80 minute album each year would probably not be a problem for the guy if he focused more on getting things done with/for the Volta. Some glory nuggets turn up on his solo works, but for the most part Omar's solo albums consist of The Mars Volta's abortions, long jams, or experiments with how many ways he can make the same boring music. He can take a break during the time he would be working on those projects, or he can work on Volta music.

I agree with all of this. While De-Loused and FTM were "fresh" releases in my book, both Amp and Bedlam sound very stale to me...which is why I've kinda gotten over the band and their output as a whole. Bedlam has a few good songs on it, but I'm really an album person, and TMV is really an album band, so a few good songs is not going to cut it for me...

I need a few good albums, and in order for them to win me back they'd have to really start focusing on their music and really tone down the over-production (and just plain awful production if we're talking Amputechture). Trim the fat. There's nothing wrong with 60 minute albums. Or even 50. Or even 40...

Bedlam feels bloated, I think some of the Bedlam songs SHOULD'VE been aborted to Omar's basement where he could later turn them into guitar-w**kery factories. They might've been better for it, and I think the album wouldn't suffer as much from it's fundemental flaw: it is very overlong, and there's just too much substance with too little variation to keep that substance fresh; thus -- stale.

Amp was stale simply because it pretty much sucked, but Bedlam, truthfully is stale in a much mroe disappointing way for me, because the production is back (it's pretty good when it's not bloated with 50 unnecessary sounds), there are a number of good to great songs, and the compositional differences (namely: energy) from Amputechture are mostly good ones; but there's too much fat, not enough meat, and the fat is always running for the hills with an AK in hand and a torched bank in the background--in short, the album is too energetic for its own good.

And then there's the drumming. It's over-the-top, which is good yes? That's what the Volta is all about is over the top. But the druming is just...silly. He seems heedless to the music around him, but more focused on shredding quicker than Omar and trying to break every drumhead he's using. He's Mike Portnoy II. Which, to me, is not a good thing. (No offense meant to DT fans, as I think that other than singer boy I think drummer boy is the weakest link in DT)

I have a number of problems with Bedlam, and many more with Amp, but most of these problems are justified according to my tasstes and musical opinion, which, obviously doesn't match that of many others. I just thought I'd give a clearer, lengthy rant about why exactly I think the latest two TMV albums are sub-par when compared to the first two.

And because I didn't say too much about Amp, here's a link to my review: Click dis

Amputechture suffers from one of the same fundemental flaws that Bedlam suffers from: it is entirely too long for its own good. There's too much content there, and not enough of it is good enough to warrant an entire album. Wha would've been great is an album with THIS tracklisting, released in mid-07, and called something quirky:

1. Vicarious Atonement (shortened to about 5 mins)
2. Metatron
3. Ilyena (with that silly end cut out)
4. Wax Simularcra
5. Goliath
6. Asilos Magdelena (without a shortened intro-noise section, about 4 mins without as much noise and looping stuff at the end)
7. Tetragrammaton (shortened, without the overly-repetetive ending section where the track begins to dwindle from its awesomeness, so it'd settle somewhere around 12 minutes)
8. Agadez
9. Ouroboros (with the last bit/4th chorus edited out, as the song gets really repettive around that point, so this one'd settle around 5 minutes or so)
10. Soothsayer
11. Day of the Baphomets
12. Conugal Burns (edited a short bit, about :20 out of it)

This totals around 84 minutes, but if a bit of some songs were cut out, or Conjugal taken out entirely (maybe Agadez could be edited a bit, as the ending bit is the best part anyway--or the Soothsayer beginning ambience, though atmospheric and good, could be edited or taken out), and with production on the Amp songs tweaked to match the standard of production on the Bedlam songs, I think this would've been a winner, mayhaps. If some of the goofy vocal effects were taken out entirely, that is. And some lyrical augmentations.

Anyway, no one ever reads all of my longer, ranty posts, so I'll stop now.

Edited by king volta - July 01 2008 at 01:46

Moatilliatta wrote: ^Well, it seems like we almost entirely agree about what the best songs are between the two records.   However, Mike Portnoy does not overplay and everything you will say about Dream Theater I will probably disagree with. However, I would like to leave the Dream Theater debate out of this.

Dream Theater is out of the discussion, as you wish

No reason to discuss them here anyway, as offense is ALWAYS taken whenever they are brought up. But I'm listening to the playlist I mentioned, and may even edit the songs when I get back home from vacation, because the pacing is really good so far, with the softer opening in place of Aberinkula, and then crazy energy for a few tracks...then Asilos, which I'm on just now. Not too bad.

You said almost entirely regarding your favorite tracks...what others would you have?

Edited by king volta - July 01 2008 at 01:48

^ I don't agree with virtually anything Mr Volta said about Amputechture and Bedlam - isn't life funny! I thought everyone agreed with me!

Mecchamputechture is my favourite TMV track. I don't think TMV songs or albums are overlong. The length makes them a little less accessible, and the album as a whole takes longer to get used to, but I don't see even a single ounce of flab on Bedlam. Amputechture was a different beast, a looser, jammier album, and eliminating that changes the character of the album. Not sure I agree with that.

But what I DO agree with is the clear and succinct way you've summarised your concerns with those two albums. I hope TMV get feedback like this. I wished I got more of it for my books.

russellk wrote: ^ I don't agree with virtually anything Mr Volta said about Amputechture and Bedlam - isn't life funny! I thought everyone agreed with me!Mecchamputechture is my favourite TMV track. I don't think TMV songs or albums are overlong. The length makes them a little less accessible, and the album as a whole takes longer to get used to, but I don't see even a single ounce of flab on Bedlam. Amputechture was a different beast, a looser, jammier album, and eliminating that changes the character of the album. Not sure I agree with that.But what I DO agree with is the clear and succinct way you've summarised your concerns with those two albums. I hope TMV get feedback like this. I wished I got more of it for my books.

Haha, well thanks for the compliment, besides our disagreements. One question though:

I know you enjoy the full of both albums, according to yourself, but can you deny or refute that the production on Amputechture is very weak? Or that the lyrics on Bedlam are pretty awful?

Here's a lyrical comparison between the two; this segment is from Vicarious Atonement, track 1 of Amputechture:

Maybe I will always haunt you
Mark the somnolence with truth
Better hang your dead practice
Than have a living home to choose
In the river Ganges God damns my name


not too shabby, though admittedly not the best either (I think that, lyrically TMV were ast their highest on De-Loused without a doubt, or even moreso when Cedric was writing for At The Drive-In, a band I enjoy possibly more than TMV as of late--Relationship of Command is an amazing album)

And now from Aberinkula, the 1st track from Bedlam:

Have you seen the living?
Tired of their own shells
All the nonbelievers
Torso in the well

Am I the one you're after?
The novice made to find
Stray abhoration stalking
Plans that forgot me 99 times
The only thing to alter
Stands in the way of you
I want your cramps to fit the fillings of my teeth

Maybe it's just me, but these lyrics are putrid. They seem formless, line after line just chosen at random with little to no correlation between them. Amp was supposedly lyrical nonsense, according to Cedric, and yet I see much more subconscious form to them than to Bedlam's lyrics, which seem like pile after pile of amputated lines spliced into one disjointed whole.


Just my opinion, but Bedlam lyrics are almost consistantly weak, while Amp has weaker lyrics as well, just not nearly as bad as Bedlam--again, in my opinion.

My question to you was, if you've forgotten, whether or not you agreed that the Amputechture production was weak, and that the Amp/Bedlam lyrics were weaker than those on De-Loused/FTM. Just curious what you think.


EDIT: Also, after your referring to me as "Mr Volta" I think it's officially time for a name change King Crimson and TMV are nowhere NEAR my favorite bands anymore...I think I'll probably be "The Antique", unless it's taken, so look forward to it.

Edited by king volta - July 01 2008 at 13:25

Moatilliatta wrote: ^I don't think the production was weak on Amputecture; it was just different. Not as thick, and I would say it's got the worst production of any Volta album, but it isn't that bad. It made them sound pretty different, and I had to come to terms with the new sound when I first bought. Some of it sounds really great. It kinda brings out a lot of their dissonance, though and I don't entirely like that.   I know that question wasn't directed at me, but I thought I'd share anyway.   I would also agree that Amputecture has better lyrics, but the man's lyrics are all bizarre so it's not that big of a deal to me.

Actually, the more I think about it, it's not so much a production problem as a plain mixing problem I hear.

Too loud guitars and vocals throughout Amputechture, and not quite enough bass (which is why you can hardly hear the 2nd half of the bass solo in Day of the Baphomets, which is comprised of mostly low-end notes, which are buried in the mix throughout most of the album), and the biggest problem: the TOO SOFT rhythm section. Drums should've been lifted and producted a bit more (much like on De-loused, where drums and percussion were very foreground), and the bass/keys always seem at odds for me on the album--they are never consistantly mixed. It's not god-awful by any means, just pretty bad when compared to the production of all 3 of the other albums, although FTM had some minor mixing problems as well (mostly noting the absence of bass and key presence).

One thing I do like about Bedlam is that the guitars are not asprominent as they were on former albums. Omar seemed to learn a slight bit of conservatism in both playing/writing and in production, and I think the album does benefit from that...or it would, but then there're the drums, which are entirely too loud on the whole in my opinion...

Edited by king volta - July 01 2008 at 14:44

I love the drum sound on Bedlam
its just the drum parts themselves are a bit much at times...and I do hope they have a few more quieter bits on the next one (and not like Tourniquet Man)

concerning Amputechture, I don't think it had one specific concept (Cedric I think compared it to Twin Peaks: "several different stories but told in the same voice") but a semi concept was that of disjointedness: the songs don't connect at all and end abruptly

^I totally forgot to mention the vocals! I'm totally with you there. One of the major things that made De-Loused and Frances so great was that everything just felt so natural, vocally and musically. They seem to be doing a lot of trying these days. Trying to be more challenging, trying to break free from their past, etc. Sometimes the crazy effects work, but sometimes they overdo it.

^^Cedric seems to use harsher singing styles on the latest two than on the first two. The singing particuarly in his lower register (verses of Aberinkula, verses of Vermicide, etc) which I particuarly don't like.

He was one of my favorite vocalists on De-loused and FTM, when most of his performances were in the higher register and emotionally charged. Now...not so much, although I still like him and think that moments like the end of Agadez ("What if we find the sunlight draws a circle?") are completely great. It just.

Rather than just one or two styles I like, Cedric added more variation to the later two albums. I guess the variations just don't suit my fancy...

its the stupid octaves he uses that get so grating, although I've noticed his vocals have gotten more aggressive on Bedlam.....perhaps to suit the music as it seems to be their "aggressive" album. The effects on Bedlam are somewhat ridiculous at points too- not that them using effects is bad (its the norm) or even the amount, but just the choice. There was some effects choices I enjoyed too- the subtly ringmodded guitar (I think) in the buildup in Cavallettas helps add a really abrasive edge to it