Mars Volta Readies Release of ‘Noctouriquet’
Prog rockers the Mars Volta will release their sixth album, titled Noctourniquet, on March 27. The album will be a concept album about a character based on the Superman villain Solomon Grundy and the Greek myth of Hyacinthus. The album will be the band’s first new album since 2009’s Octahedron, and all music was written by co-founders Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez.
In related news, Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez’s former band, At the Drive-In, announced recently that it will reunite at this year’s Coachella Music and Arts Festival, which is to be held over two weekends this April. At the Drive-In endured an apparently nasty breakup 11 years ago, and all band members told various interviewers in the intervening years that a reunion was unlikely. But the band sent a not-so-cryptic Tweet the day before the Coachella lineup was announced that suggested the band would be getting back together. And sure enough, there they were the following day on the Coachella official lineup.
A Mars Volta song, “Zed and Two Naughts” will be featured on the new baseball video game, “MLB 12: The Show.” That song also is listed on a tracklist of the new album posted at RollingStone.com. According to a press release, the new album will, “trace a narrative journey with a defined protagonist, this time inspired by disparate elements including 1980s U.K. alt-rockers The Godfathers, Superman comic nemesis Solomon Grundy and the Greek myth of Hyacinthus.
The Mars Volta formed the same year At the Drive-In broke up. While Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez worked on this new project, the remaining members of At the Drive-In went on to form Sparta. The Mars Volta released their first EP, Tremulant, in 2001, and went on to record debut album De-Loused in the Comatorium with legendary producer Rick Rubin.