Sometimes you miss one?!

Every once in a while there is a band that comes along and makes a great piece of art. Now I must admit I was a bit slow on not just this Album but also the band. Who do I speak of but The Mars Volta. One forum I frequent is filled with TMV fans, but all the talk just never settled in. They had finished there leg of the tour with A Perfect Circle the last two times I saw them, so I missed out on experiencing them first hand. Let me quickly tell the story of how I found Frances The Mute. I'm a sucker for female singers in rock bands, so one day at work a song comes on that is very catchy and sounds like a female. So I go and check to see the name and it's The Mars Volta the Widow. So that blew the female thing but I still liked it so I downloaded the album for the one track. After about a week I decided to burn the whole CD. I immediately fell in love with the Latin flair of L'Via L'Viaquez despite the fact I couldn't understand half the song. The next song that caught my attention was Cygnus...Vismund Cygnus. Now my favorite song on the album has to be Cassandra Geminni. At a whopping 35 minutes it's almost as long as recent albums from Linkin Park(bad) and System of a Down(good). It has everything from blaring guitars to a trumpet solo. The Mars Volta have done what few today are willing to do and that's make a "concept" record.

Now to my one complaint and it's not about the band but the label. Universal told them that 5 songs was legally a EP so the had to cut Cassandra into 8 tracks. Which is horrible if you're listening to it on an MP3 player. One more final point this CD is proof that illegal downloading of music can lead to record sales because there is no way I would have bought the CD(which I did after a week of it being stuck in my CD player) without downloading and listening to it first. Also this CD hasn't left my CD player since September 10th.