Style: Art rock, progressive pop, electro-industrial (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Radiohead, Invisible, The Smile, Aphex Twin
Country: Texas, United States
Release date: 11 April 2025
In music, with experimentation comes freedom. I know, no shit, right? But hear me out. Any piece an artist creates establishes a context for their later works: how much less of a disappointment would Obscura‘s latest trash fire have been were it not for their back catalog of tech death masterpieces? And how surprising would the uplifting post-rock of Anathema‘s The Optimist have been without their extensive history of moody, lugubrious alt rock? Wholly disinterested in comparisons to their older works, progressive rock legends The Mars Volta took this truism to its logical conclusion on their 2022 self-titled LP, completely eschewing the progressive rock and post-hardcore of their early career for Caribbean-flavored art pop. With such a radical shift in sound, how do you even create a context in which to understand a piece? The quick answer is, you can’t easily, and you’re forced to look at the artist through fresh eyes to be able to say anything particularly meaningful or interesting. With their new groundwork laid, The Mars Volta have the freedom to experiment however the hell they want, making a firm statement that they are untethered from their past as a progressive post-hardcore mainstay. What do they do with this newfound freedom on latest release, Lucro Sucio; Los Ojos del Vacío (Dirty Profit; The Eyes of the Void)?
Further distancing themselves from their post-hardcore sensibilities, Lucro Sucio sits closer to Radiohead‘s Kid A with added touches of latin jazz, electro-industrial à la Death Grips, and Aphex Twin-flavored ambient/IDM. Tense-but-subdued instrumentation, effect-laden vocals, and a surrealist bent create the feeling of traversing a trepidatious and vast steppe that gets intermittently swallowed in psychedelia. Tracks like “Reina Tormenta” (Storm Queen) and “Alba del Orate” (Dawn of the Madman) urge along frenetic percussion while other pieces are happy to indulge in dirging, weightless lethargy, such as “Maullidos” (Mews) and “Voice in my Knives”. Keyboards are also prominent, acting as the main melodic thread alongside Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s vocals. Lucro Sucio‘s tracks come together as a singular piece that flows from moment to moment, attached by interstitial asides and moved along by textural exploration.
While verse-chorus structures do manifest on tracks like “Morgana” and “The Iron Rose”, their presence is secondary and almost incidental in comparison to the use of texture as a tool for progression. “Enlazan la Tinieblas” (The Darkness Binds), for example, touts a subdued maximalism thanks to its generous use of electronic and organic sounds in a relatively hushed framework. Little to no negative space is left as every bit of sonic real estate is occupied by a percussive symphony performed by a thousand skittering bugs; by its end, the bevy of layers capitulates to overblown industrial bells, all of the flitting blips and bleeps completely overtaken in a blinding and inescapable light. A segue through bizarre looped voice effects leads into following track “Mictlán” (The Underworld), which responds to this textural complexity by stripping it all away and opening the space up for glowing and minimalist ambience under Bixler-Zavala’s vocals. Some tracks even squeeze both approaches into their comparatively short runtimes: “Cue the Sun” is fairly open and spacious, keeping its textures in restraint until a chaotic and jazzy instrumental break bullies its way into the otherwise tranquil atmosphere.
The backbone that allows Lucro Sucio to explore texture without completely losing focus is the use of a subtle flow, consistently revisiting a handful of atmospheres. Opener “Fin” establishes an ethereal and tranquil sensibility for tracks like “Mictlán”, “Voice in My Knives”, and “Morgana” to safely return to after the more turbulent explorations on “Enlazan la Tinieblas”, “Alba del Orate”, and “Detrás la Puerta Dorada” (Behind the Golden Door). Additionally, small interludes help to bridge otherwise unrelated tracks through the use of repetitive and extended sections that fade slowly between ideas. “Poseedora de mi Sombra” (Possessor of my Shadow) tethers “Voice in My Knives” to “Celaje” (Cloudscape) by beginning with the languid atmospherics of “Voice”, but becomes gradually encompassed by a lopsided jazz break that ends in keyboard flourishes hinting at the main melodic ideas of “Celaje”. However, some tracks only work as a segue due to their lack of direction: “Detrás la Puerta Dorada” feels like a spiritual successor to “Five per Cent for Nothing” off of Yes‘ Fragile, a short burst of chaotic chords and staggered meter in a frantic jazz framework. There’s a shocking amount going on, but it’s too cacophonous to make any sense of, and so the track only really works to bridge “Un Disparo al Vacío” (A Shot Into the Void) and “Maullidos”.
Lucro Sucio‘s most captivating tracks have a self-contained progression while working within the record’s larger context: “Celaje” appears as a relatively simple and languid track at first blush, but closer inspection reveals trippy time changes and subtle shifts in mood. Introduced with slow rhythms and vocals drenched in watery reverb, increasingly frequent drum fills pair with a shredding organ until the song opens up massively through spacey keyboards. The track then slows down into plaintive vocal melodies underlaid by sparse but thumping bass before being suddenly pulled back into its establishing idea, expertly transitioning from section to section despite its short runtime. “Un Disparo al Vacío” goes through a similar progression, starting with forward percussion and building into a fervent vocal performance with a killer guitar riff. Unfortunately, the guitar is held back by the subsequent quiet drum production, which—while still quite captivating—stops this ‘drop’ of sorts from having the staggering punch it could have had.
Despite a stellar flow and willingness to revel in its atmospheres, Lucro Sucio‘s focus on texture can sometimes make memorability a challenge. Like trying to recall an exciting dream that continues to fade from your consciousness, it’s often easier to remember the emotions associated with a track than it is to remember any specific melodies or moments. Catchy vocal lines help to anchor compositions and expansive synth chords immediately bring the listener back to Earth after a hallucinatory aside, but these aren’t much more than snippets in the grand scheme of the record. Ironically enough, Lucro Sucio’s exceedingly smooth progression is quite difficult to map out because of how heavily the album leans into its hazy, surreal aesthetic: is that track a reprise, or is it just similar enough to an earlier moment that it activates the same neurons?1 One gets the sense that the record is intentionally oblique and standoffish, unwilling to be understood except by its most dedicated listeners.
Lucro Sucio; Los Ojos del Vacío sets itself far apart from anything in The Mars Volta‘s back catalog, fully embracing the newfound freedom in their refreshed songwriting approach. While glimpses of their core sound are undoubtedly present, the use of texture as a driving musical force and the consolidation of each track into a free-flowing singular piece shows an eagerness to experiment even after two-plus decades of collaboration. Lucro Sucio is mysterious, engaging, and sonically rich, and despite some missed opportunities and struggles with memorability, it’s difficult to see the record as anything but a successful and artistically whole experiment. The Eyes of the Void stared, and The Mars Volta confidently stared back.
tRecommended tracks: Celaje, Un Disparo al Vacío, Reina Tormenta/Enlazan las Tinieblas, Cue the Sun
You may also like: Kayo Dot, Bend the Future, The Mercury Tree
Final verdict: 7.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Clouds Hill Music – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
The Mars Volta is:
– Cedric Bixler-Zavala (vocals)
– Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (guitars)
– Eva Gardner (bass)
– Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez (percussion)
– Leo Genovese (keyboards, piano, saxophone)
– Linda-Philoméne Tsoungui (drums)
- This actually happened to me on my first ten or so listens of Lucro Sucio: I had a ‘Mandela Effect’ moment with “Morgana”, as I could have sworn it was reprising ideas from earlier in the album. Upon closer inspection, it’s the first time that those ideas appear anywhere, an experience I’ve never had with a record. ↩︎
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