The Mars Volta Tickets

The Mars Volta
The Mars Volta, an American rock group, consists of Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Omar Rodr?guez-L?pez, Isaiah Ikey Owens and Jeremy Michael Ward. These musicians came together in 2001.

The Mars Volta come under the genre of progressive rock, but they also have jazz, punk, psychedelic, and Latin influences. The group is known for their wild, energetic and improvised live shows, they are also recognized for their complex and usually concept-based studio albums.

The Beginning
The roots of The Mars Volta are found in the side project of At the Drive-In members Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez known as De Facto; which also included Jeremy Michael Ward: audio technician, close friend, and cousin of At the Drive-In member Jim Ward.

De Facto featured Bixler-Zavala on drums, Rodriguez-Lopez on bass, and Ward with various loop, vocal, sound, and distortion effects ? a composite of sounds, hanging squarely on tripped-out, instrumental dub. Though De Facto started as a local band with a rock feel, they were rooted in the realm of dub reggae pioneers such as Lee Perry and Dr. Alimantado.

The group also dabbled in electronica, Latin, salsa, and jazz which provided them with a distinct sound. The band played local shows around their home town, El Paso, Texas, and released their first album How Do You Dub? You Fight for Dub, You Plug Dub In. The group eventually moved to Long Beach, California in 2000 and keyboardist Ikey Owens was added to the band lineup. In 2001, De Facto released their second album, Megaton Shotblast, on Gold Standard Laboratories, and received instant success.

Although much of their initial fan base was based upon their association with At the Drive-In, De Facto continued experimenting with new sounds after Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala decided to end their time with the other band. The remaining members of At the Drive-In went on to form Sparta. Rodriguez-Lopez cited frustration with growing mainstream success, as well as creative suffocation as his motivation for quitting At the Drive-In, although Bixler-Zavala takes credit for the break-up of the band. Eva Gardner joined De Facto, and it became what is now The Mars Volta, a new project they envisioned would fulfill their creative desires.

During 2001, the band recorded two songs with drummer Blake Fleming and producer Alex Newport, which became their first demo. Later the lineup for their first public show at Chain Reaction in Anaheim, California was Rodriguez-Lopez, Bixler-Zavala, Owens, Gardner, Ward, and drummer Jon Theodore. This lineup recorded three more tracks with Alex Newport, which became the Tremulant EP, released sparsely in early 2002.

Since the demise of At the Drive-In, Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala once again found themselves performing in small clubs characterized by chaotic live shows and heavy drug use. Following the Tremulant EP, The Mars Volta continued touring and changing band members while preparing for De-Loused in the Comatorium, produced with Rick Rubin. Whereas Tremulant had no general theme (except the prophetic mentioning of its follow-up album), De-Loused was a unified work of speculative fiction that told the story from the first-person perspective of a drug-induced coma, in which the protagonist battles with the evil side of his mind.

Though lyrically obscure, The Mars Volta stated in interviews that the album's protagonist is based on their late friend Julio Venegas, or Cerpin Taxt, as mentioned in the story, who was in a coma several years prior to his awakening, after which he jumped from the Mesa Street overpass onto Interstate-10 in El Paso during afternoon rush-hour traffic. Venegas' death was also referenced in the At the Drive-In song Ebroglio from their album Acrobatic Tenement.

Amputechture was released in Australia on September 9, 2006, on September 8, 2006 in Europe and on September 12, 2006 in the US. Omar Rodr?guez-Lopez produced the record and Rich Costey mixed it. The artwork was created by Jeff Jordan. It was their first album that was not a concept album.

Although the motif of amputation was explored there is was no underlying narrative. It was also to be their last album with drummer Jon Theodore. In 2007 Thomas Pridgen became the new permanent drummer for the band. He joined them at the March 12th show in New Zealand, where the band debuted the song known as Idle Tooth on the band's setlists, which later appears as Wax Simulacra in Bixler-Zavala's on stage lyric booklet. After shows in New Zealand and Australia, The Mars Volta toured a few West Coast venues as the headliner, then entered the studio to record the fourth LP titled The Bedlam in Goliath.

Planned for release around the same time as the new album is a live concert DVD shot by director Jorge Hernandez Aldana of one of their most recent Australian performances. The Bedlam in Goliath is set to be released by Universal Records on January 29th, 2008. The Mars Volta is also set to release an online game called Goliath: The Soothsayer. It is an online game based on The Mars Volta 's forthcoming album The Bedlam In Goliath.

Based on a true story that inspired the album, The Bedlam In Goliath chronicles The Mars Volta's time with the Soothsayer aka the Ouija board owned by vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala and its transition from a source of fun on tour to a psycho-spiritual force that almost tore the band apart. The game will be available exclusively via Amazon.com from January 2nd through January 29th, the release date for the album.