Music is powerfully linked to memory. Listening to favorite albums, I often recall the periods when they came into my life. It is fitting, I think, that De-Loused in the Comatorium, the debut album from The Mars Volta, is forever associated in my mind with The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker; a properly nonsensical relationship given the bizarre pastiche of an album. Many were the hours I spent in the summer of aught-three sailing the seas of Not Hyrule and listening to TMV’s first masterwork.

De-Loused is frenetic. No better way to put it. This was to be expected, given the band’s lineage¹ and their earlier EP, Tremulant. Girded though I was for sonic assault, De-Loused floored me right out of the gate with ominous ambience and word-salad lyrics on “Son et Lumiere.”² This gives way to thunderous passages that flow straight into the raucous “Inertiatic E.S.P.,” a song matched in ferocity by some of At the Drive-In’s work,³ but not in craft.

The Mars Volta’s craft is perhaps the most unfairly maligned aspect of their work. Some decry the band’s “wankery.”⁴ To be sure, the musicians on De-Loused have technique in spades. Rodriguez-Lopez’s guitar work is often as technical as it is demented, Bixler-Zavala’s vocals compare nicely with Robert Plant, and Jon Theodore’s drumming veers effortlessly between flair, function, and grace. The guest stars, too, bring plenty of technical firepower: John Frusciante, wasted in Red Hot Chili Peppers,⁵ contributes his customary splendid guitar work, and Flea, similarly overqualified for his day job, handles bass duties with aplomb.⁶ None of this, however, is “virtuosity to a fault.”

By way of example, let us turn to closer “Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt,” my favorite track on the album. Theodore’s drumming on the verse is certainly intricate, but that intricacy sets the stage for the entire song. The verses are cramped, driven passages punctuated by shifting play on the hi-hat and quick hits on the kick. The verses are then interspersed⁷ with more open but equally driven breakdowns, all paying off with a monster chorus. The drumming establishes the rhythm, yet keeps the listener off balance—until we hit the chorus, where the instrumentals fall into line behind Bixler-Zavala’s powerful vocal. Would the song still be great with Meg White behind the kit? Probably. But the presence of superior musicianship, a delicate blend of chops and composition, elevates the song nearly to godhood.

At the outset, I termed the album frenetic, and while I stand by that characterization, allow me to add another: unhinged. It is primarily the work of a visionary, Rodriguez-Lopez, set loose for the first time from the need to appease. Thanks to At the Drive-In’s breakthrough at the turn of the 21^st century, TMV would have a built-in audience, allowing Rodriguez-Lopez to concoct whatever he wanted. He also had the luxury of a stable of capable players behind him,⁸ able to execute on his vision.

At this point, I mostly want to heap further praise. I want to tell you, dear reader, about how brilliant songs like “Roulette Dares” and “Eriatarka” are, and about how they are brilliant. At length. But I haven’t the words. De-Loused in the Comatorium holds the distinction of being the first album that I ever felt particularly challenged by. Even At the Drive-In’s brash, aggressive post-hardcore bore sufficient resemblance to ‘90s alternative rock, long the only genre to which I paid attention, for me to dig it. Not even TMV’s own Tremulant EP hinted at what was to come on De-Loused.

Before this album, I thought the notion that one might have to work to understand or appreciate anything was ludicrous. Everything I had ever liked—music, sports, food, anything—I had liked immediately. Anything I hadn’t liked immediately, I discarded. The first time through De-Loused, I didn’t know what to do. It was not anything like what I expected, and I didn’t much like it. This felt wrong, given how much I loved At the Drive-In and Tremulant. For the first time, I, egomaniac that I was, concluded that I must be wrong. So I sailed the seas of Not Hyrule and I listened to De-Loused, and I listened and I listened and I listened, and eventually “Roulette Dares” got me. I have not looked back.

De-Loused in the Comatorium, therefore, was more to me than Another Great Fucking Album. It was the catalyst for me taking more than a cursory listen/glance/what have you at whatever came across my path. Without taking that step, I surely would have missed out on, at least for some time, nearly all of the albums I now count among my favorites.⁹ The album’s pseudo-narrative concludes, in fabulously dramatic fashion, with one simple question: “who brought me here?” Were that question posed to me, The Mars Volta would be a big part of the answer.

1. Mars Volta founders Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala previously played in the brilliant At the Drive-In [↩]
2. “Clipside of the pinkeye sight/I’m not the percent you think survives/I need sanctuary in the pages of this book/Gestating with all the other rats/Nurse said that my skin will need a graft/I am of pockmarked shapes/The vermin you need to loathe.” Yeah, Cedric. That. [↩]
3. “Arcarsenal” and “Cosmonaut” come to mind [↩]
4. The Pitchfork reviewer, when not slamming the lyrics, wails that “[v]irtuosity-to-a-fault was the death of prog in the 70s, but the Mars Volta’s aimless hammer-and-wail tactics—whether performed with deep-seeded passion or not—is [sic] just as regrettable.” [↩]
5. Zing! [↩]
6. I am not qualified to evaluate Isaiah Owens’ keyboard playing. Suffice it to say I have no criticism on this front. [↩]
7. Open that hi-hat [↩]
8. ATDI’s Tony Hajjar, Paul Hinojos, and Jim Ward were hardly amateurs, but, with the exception of Hajjar, neither were they particularly noteworthy players. [↩]
9. Ironically, though, I nearly gave up on TMV’s 2008 masterpiece The Bedlam in Goliath, on which more another day, because I didn’t get it the first couple times through. [↩]

Hit up the Sounds link, find it under “Unfinished.” Because it is.

Incoming