If that’s all worded as a rather harsh appraisal of where we were at with Omar’s creative output, then perhaps it’s meant to be. A second Antemasque LP, Saddle On The Atom Bomb, with the year 1999’s Travis Barker (‘member All the Small Things? I ‘member?) is despite a spate of promising US concerts last year and the production of a music video (again, Instagram posts), also yet to surface. At The Drive-In have spent some time in the studio this year, as evidenced by various Instagram posts, but their next recorded statement seems some while off. They’ve toured for most of 2016, embedding new guitarist Keeley Davis, breaking Bixler Zavala’s vocal chords and their (righteous) anti-crowd-surfing rules as they went. The elephant in the room, the “old t-shirt that doesn’t fit anymore” to quote a Rodríguez-López interview from 2012 (and at this point, you’d think the biggest draw) At The Drive-In “reignited” unexpectedly with the promise of “new music this year”. Their debut album was perhaps rushed to release and the recorded songs never quite achieved the same lift or gravitas that they found on the road over the subsequent months. You’d be forgiven as well for having missed Bosnian Rainbows, the 80s new wave influenced ‘democracy and broccoli’ (democalli? Brococracy?) project borne in Volta’s ashes with motorik beat and avant-garde producer Deantoni Parks (who had played with Mars Volta briefly in ’06, rejoining for the group’s final album Noctourniquet, and who recently put in a stunning shift on Flying Lotus’s conceptual work You’re Dead) new wave synth ‘educator’ Nicci Kasper (who played with Parks in both Kudu and Dark Angels – whose ongoing remix projects are a delight) and Teri Gender Bender of Mexican garage-punk outfit Le Butcherettes, who had previously collaborated with Rodríguez-López’ on the Octopus Kool-Aid album. But I will gladly put a case together for arguing that despite a career built from endurance-testing concept albums and a reputation as one of the most visceral and synchronous live groups (through various incarnations and substantive line-up differences), The Mars Volta never quite fulfilled their potential. I haven’t got much sympathy for the manner in which that great band fell apart: years of miscommunication and unresolved tensions have been cited by various former members, but at this point it feels like exhuming a body for autopsy long past the point which anyone has a vested interest. A low key self-release for pop-pastiche/nostalgia-indulgence Antemasque was perhaps more group therapy for Rodiguez-Lopez and Mars Volta vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala following their unsightly and regrettably public statements regarding each other as Volta dissipated. Indulgence is another accusation often levelled (like it’s a bad thing) at Rodríguez-López, but with analysis, it’s hard to see the purpose of any truly expressive creative process besides indulgence of the self.īut since erstwhile prog-overlords The Mars Volta fizzled out in 2012, you may be forgiven for wondering what the once prodigious Rodríguez-López had been up to. Accusations of onanism regarding his output, that ‘he needs an editor’, frankly miss the point: when you’re putting out five records a year, there should be room for experimentation, for making necessary and vital mistakes, for following curiosity and being self-indulgent.
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