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The Mars Volta is a band that is known equally for their live performances as they are for their unique fusion of jazz, punk, Latin, and progressive. The Mars Volta, on most occasions, finds a way to give you metaphors for things you never knew you could describe. That most definitely holds true for their recent stop at Roseland Ballroom.
Coming out of a newly released album, The Mars Volta starts breaking in their new songs and gives everyone a bang for their buck. The first song was “A Fistful of Dollars.” Appreciation for Clint Eastwood? Maybe. Making you feel like you’re going to war is a little more appropriate, and who better to lead the war with his stage presence but Cedric Bixler Zavala?
Playing only a 90-minute set, you wonder where time went, and if you missed their jam sessions. Well, you didn’t. They played 14 songs that redefined them live. Songs like “Son Et Lumiere,” “Intertiatic ESP,” “Cotopaxi,” and “Drunkship of Lanterns,” were seen under a tighter light. They have cut out the progressive assumption and filled it with a well written and hard-hitting mentality, an outlook seen in their recent album, Octahedron.
Playing their old hits with this new outlook was not a bad idea, either. It manifests itself as an evolution: an evolution that Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the guitarist and brain behind The Mars Volta, handled that night with poise, which translated into his playing, which furthermore, like a domino effect, helped the others play on point. As usual, all Cedric had to do was ride the melting chariots towards a different understanding of their vessel.
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