OK, everyone that has said Mars Volta so far... I hadn't heard them so I located the music and spent the past 40 minutes or so listening and ummm...
I'm guessing none of you are any older than 25 and missed the whole prog-rock boom of the 70's that inevitably collpased under its own virtuosity-to-a-fault weight. At first, I was thinking it was kinda cool, but teetering on being too pretentious for its own good but about 5 songs in, I realized it was a schtick. They're just piling sounds on top of each other and hoping it sounds ok. And those sounds... it's anything goes as long as it's not "how everyone else does it." But, in trying SO hard not to be a formula, they have their own formula... hi, here's the riff. STOP! ooooh, spacey reverb (cue pyro in 3...2...1...). riff again! (so you don't think we completely lost track of where we were) noodle, noodle, noodle. fade into dub effects, reversed bongos, phased synths, twiddle, twiddle, twiddle back down to quiet then start the process all over again.
Imagine EVERY hardcore band you can think of whipping through ELP's "Karn Evil 9" all at the same time. Without practice.
Looks like Rick Rubin produced this - doesn't have his stamp on it to my ears, though. It really sounds like they were going for something that they didn't quite hit. And don't get me wrong, it sounds like they really were passionate about making this music... they just didn't convey that passion very well.
Anyway, since I hadn't heard of them before this thread... thought I'd share the review here.
