The Mars Volta: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Paul Hinojos, Cedric Bixler-Zavala.

Personnel: Sara Christina Gross (saxophone).

Additional personnel: John Frusciante (guitar).

Audio Mixer: Rich Costey.

Recording information: El Paso, TX; Los Angeles, CA; Melbourne, Australia.

Director: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez.

Arranger: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez.

On its third full-length album, the Mars Volta abandoned the enigmatic conceptual themes of its acclaimed earlier outings, DE-LOUSED IN THE COMATORIUM and FRANCES THE MUTE, but left its fascinatingly bizarre aesthetic intact. The result is a more immediate, though certainly not more conventional, approach, as vocalist Cedric Bixler Zavala and guitarist Omar A. Rodriguez-Lopez once again take listeners on a tour of surreal rock territory where the sounds of King Crimson, Santana, and Led Zeppelin are welded together into frenetic post-punk-influenced aural sculptures. Featuring significant contributions by multi-instrumentalist Pablo Hinojos-Gonzalez and frequent guest guitarist John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, AMPUTECHTURE is slightly less daunting than Volta's previous discs (see the stomping, horn-laden "Viscera Eyes"), but no less inventive.

The Mars Volta are continual contenders for the mantle of most experimental high-profile metal group, along with System of a Down, an artist they've toured with but who usually sell 20 times more records. Mars Volta aren't as popular, not because their riffs are less memorable or innovative but because their cycle of musical buildup and release, although similarly jarring, can last at least 20 minutes instead of System's two. (It's the difference between having a background in acid rock and having one in thrash.) While the early reports on third album Amputechture commented that the duo of Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez had learned a few lessons about silence and forsaken the concept album, don't believe it. The album is little different than their two previous atom bombs, De-Loused in the Comatorium and Frances the Mute -- tense and anxious, continually pushing the boundaries of extreme production, with long periods of dynamics that rise ever higher, followed by an explosion of release (usually screaming hard rock with storms of atonal brass and horns). The album opens with "Vicarious Atonement," five minutes of spectral effects and piercing guitar that gets a boost at the beginning of the next track, "Tetragrammaton," and then blooms into full riffing glory after a few more minutes (and they're still nowhere near the end of the 16-minute track). John Frusciante, eccentric genius from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, returns on guitar, but Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez exert so much control over the sound of Mars Volta that Frusciante makes virtually no individual impression on this record, although most of the guitar work is his. (Granted, his presence leaves Rodriguez-Lopez open for more intricate work on production.) The Mars Volta are one of the most intriguing bands in rock, but their huge musical power is often deflected by Bixler-Zavala's conceptual themes (which are difficult to follow, but also, perversely, impossible to ignore) and blitzkrieg dynamics that are either dialed down to one or up to ten (but rarely in-between). ~ John Bush

Rolling Stone (p.88) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "Three songs here exceed ten minutes and are crammed with quantum-physics-level time signatures, battle-to-the-death jousts between guitar and horns and Bixler-Zavala's hummingbird keening."

Spin (p.104) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[Omar Rodriguez-Lopez] scales back, relatively speaking, and rediscovers the crucial difference between prog nirvana and prog indulgence."

Entertainment Weekly (p.77) - "AMPUTECHTURE again revels in overkill: fever-pitched vocals, orchestral fanfares, Latin percussion solos, even an acoustic Spanish interlude." -- Grade: B

Uncut (p.89) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "Another 76-minute suite of apocrypha, endlessly contorting melodies, psychedelic curlicues...and general hysteria..."

Vibe (p.156) - "[T]hey deeply, rapturously feel every long-winded, loony lick."

Kerrang (Magazine) (p.66) - Ranked #19 in Kerrang's "20 Greatest Albums of 2006" -- "[L]eft-field esoterica and constantly mutating space rock jams."