AMPUTECHTURE

The Mars Volta

Heavy Prog

3.89 | 647 ratings

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Conor Fynes
Prog Reviewer

'Amputechture' - The Mars Volta (7.5/10)

The first two records released by The Mars Volta (and their 'Tremulant EP') amazed me and blew me away. Their spacy, improvised and very unique style produced two masterpieces of modern progressive music, 'De-Loused In The Comatorium' and 'Frances The Mute.' While the band's third full-length album 'Amputechture' is excellent and has some really amazing sections in it, it's not quite up to par with the first two (although it's certainly a lot better than the noisy and disappointing 'Bedlam In Goliath.')

'Amputechture' has always seemed to me as being marriage between the two styles found on each of the previous two albums. There is the frantic raw energy found on 'De-Loused In The Comatorium' mixed with the spaciness and constant atmospherics showcased on 'Frances The Mute.' Funny as it may sound for such a 'weird' band such as The Mars Volta, some of the songs on 'Amputechture' actually sound very concisely composed, even if they're pretty long throughout. While attention to some sort of structure is always a good thing, and there are definately parts to remember, with the exception of some of the material, the songs just seem to blend in with themselves, which obviously isn't a good for songs that typically range up to nine minutes.

'Tetragrammaton' is the only song here that really benefits from being long. The other songs could have been honestly just as effective if they had been stripped down.

While 'Amputechture' has the energy/atmosphere combined from the first two albums, while it's still a great album to listen to once in a while, it simply doesn't have enough of those true moments of bliss that I look for in The Mars Volta. That's not to say there aren't any here, but you'll have to fish for them. Four stars.

Conor Fynes | 4/5 | 2009-3-18

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