The Mars Volta - Octahedron

The Mars Volta call their fifth album Octahedron their "acoustic album". The music itself is rather semi-acoustic in terms of instrumentation. However, one can find less excess and more focus here in comparison to TMV's other albums. Experimentation seems meaningful and well integrated, for example the interesting free-jazz piano workout on "Halo of Nembutals". And some of the songs, like "Since We've Been Wrong", are well written, even beautiful. A modest opus by TMV standards, but good music does not have to be noisy nor bombastic. Sometimes less is indeed more.


The Halo of Nembutals


Since We've Been Wrong