The Mars Volta, Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazón, 2023

 

The Mars Volta, Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazón

By: Rock N Roll Animal

It took 10 years for The Mars Volta to return from the grave with their eponymous album last year. The album featured a band that ultimately had a different sound than what we knew from their last record. 2012's Noctourniquet. But, in turn Noctourniquet sounded very different from 2009's Octahedron, and so backwards to 2003's Deloused in the Comatorium. In short, every album by The Mars Volta has been different. There would be no reason to be surprised that the band continues to evolve at an accelerated pace. Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazón, is the most recent recording released by the band from El Paso, Texas. And once again, The Mars Volta's new album is unlike anything that has come before. Well, almost different. Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazón is an entirely acoustic album. The songs on the album are the same ones from last year's album of the same name, but reinvented as an approach that draws from folk, Latin, Caribbean and jazz. With The Mars Volta you get excited when a new album arrives, then you start to wonder what will be different, then you are shaken by the band's new twist, you struggle to understand the enigma, little by little it dissolves and you find yourself with the real message, with the new vision and by understanding it, you evolve as well. The evolution of the band has been interesting, but it has not been pleasant for everyone. For Noctourniquet it was already obvious that the band was looking for new forms of expression away from the extreme complexity of their first recordings. The band has accelerated into a zone of purity and simplicity that might make some uncomfortable. Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazón works as the work of a band that has entered a new musical stage and has left its past far behind. The Mars Volta already sounds like a completely different band, one that continues to make wonderful cosmic music, but that already belongs, in short, to a parallel universe that is difficult for many to decipher. Vigil acquires an even more direct identity than its previous version. New doors open for the band.