KEY POINTS:
It's near impossible to outshine the two front men of the Mars Volta when they're in full flight during a show. Guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is a tiny, afro-wearing guitar hero who shreds as effortlessly as he improvises, and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala, tonight dressed in skinny jeans, with a
bright red belt and a black polka dot shirt, is like a Latin Robert Plant with the high kicks and other moves of a young James Brown.
But for much of tonight's show the crowd only has eyes and ears for drummer Thomas Pridgen who joined the band last year. The Los Angeles-based prog-metallers were without a sticksman for a long time because, well, it takes a certain kind of beast to keep time for these boundary-pushing crazies. Judging by Pridgen's animalisitc precision they found the right man.
The Mars Volta, on their fourth visit to New Zealand, are devastatingly brilliant. Only they would start a gig with a new song - described as Intro Song on the set list - clocking in at an epic 20 minutes.
The two and a half hour non stop show is deliciously sonic and chaotic with instruments ranging from bass clarinet, flute and saxophones (all played by hard working Adrián Terrazas-González), to shakers and keyboards, to twin guitars and Bixler-Zavala's shrill, operatic wailings.
It's like John Coltrane and his band, brought into the future, and fronted by a pair of musical wizards who love salsa, funk and free jazz as much as they do Pink Floyd and metal.
They are self-indulgent and proud but in contrast to past shows there is none of the earnestness that goes with it and the eight members look like they are having more fun than ever making this mental, yet brilliant, music.
From new album The Bedlam In Goliath they rip and trip through Wax Simulacra, Agadez, Aberinkula, Goliath, and, best of all, the berserk Ouroborous.
The band's second album Frances the Mute provides the most psychedelic, funk-meets-metal moment of the night on Cygnus...Vismund Cygnus.
Off last album Amputechture there's the unrelenting thud and 70s funk of Viscera Eyes, and later Tetragrammaton, which starts with a beautiful Bixler-Zavala serenade that erupts into one of the night's most chaotic periods. Every player goes off on their own demented tangent, especially percussionist Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez (Omar's brother) who man handles three shakers at once.
Really though it's not about individual songs because they are all welded together and on occasion they circle back 20 or 30 minutes later to remind you of what song they are playing. It's extraordinary music. As a friend says it's compelling enough to have 18-year-old bogans bopping through even the darkest of atonal bass clarinet solos.
This is a mind and body meltdown dished up as only the Mars Volta can do. What a show and it rates as their best New Zealand performance yet.