Is it self-indulgent twaddle or live music at its most powerful? Reviewer Chris Schulz has his senses awakened by prog-metal act The Mars Volta.
The Mars Volta
Where: Logan Campbell Centre, Auckland
When: Thursday, June 26
You don't go to a Mars Volta show expecting to hear hit singles. For starters, they don't have any - and if they did they wouldn't play them anyway.
Instead, the prog-metal act - comprised of former At the Drive-In members Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López - like to provide a more challenging listening experience.
They've proved that fact over the course of four otherworldy albums, peaking with last year's The Bedlam in Goliath - a record based around the concept of a haunted ouija board.
And the seven-piece act like to be just as challenging live, if their uncompromising Logan Campbell Centre show was anything to go by.
There's no witty banter from front man Bixler-Zavala. There are no gaps between songs. Heck, most tracks don't even have structured choruses or verses.
Instead, the band allows their songs, rhythms, instruments - and often each other - to crash around like dodgem cars at a carnival. You can try and nod your head, but it won't be in time.
But that's the entertaining thing about live Mars Volta experience: Watching them lose control, and then seeing if their attempts to reel it all back in succeed. Sometimes they do, occasionally they don't.
Yep, there were plenty of meandering, seemingly pointless moments during the two-and-a-half hour show in which shoegazing was compulsory.
But there were times when the band seemed to peak together that made it all worthwhile.
Like the pummeling version of Goliath's Aberinkula in which Rodríguez-López showed off the kind of skills hours on Guitar Hero won't teach you.
Then there was Wax Simulacra - a stunningly short song that earned a loud round of applause, probably because of the ridiculous amount of restraint shown by the band to keep it under the three-minute mark.
And when Bixler-Zavala sang random lyrics from hip-hop star Ghostface Killah - taken from the single Kilo, no doubt pleasing any stoners in the audience - it proved they're not entirely joyless hermits.
To the casual listener, The Mars Volta experience is probably nothing more than self-indulgent twaddle.
But to those still standing after two-and-a-half eye-opening hours, it's no understatement to say they can awaken senses you didn't know you had.
How many bands can you say that about?
*What did you think of the show? Post your comments below.
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