Review Summary: An underrated achievement from a band that has acheived so much. Tremulant provides an intense prospective from the viewpoint of listeners.
Cedric Zavala - Vocals
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Guitar
Eva Gardener - Bass
Jon Theodore - Drums
Isaiah "Ikey" Owens - Keyboards
Jeremy Ward - Samples
Before The Mars Volta blew up, Frances the Mute particularly, and before they became a bit pretentious, there was the album
Tremulant. This album is a three song EP that went unnoticed for reasons beyond me. From what little attention it gets, it certainly demands more respect.
Tremulant brought an album that derived the classic contents of a Mars Volta album: ambient noises, vocal effects, creative guitar riffs, smooth bass licks, and dance music (non-mosh of course). Yet, they did not put each characteristic out of proportion, and that is what makes it brilliant.
The album has a persistent flow, beginning and ending with beats that make the album circular. For starters,
Cut That City starts out with a two-minute intro that consists merely of off-pattern beats and ambient noises. Then the mood becomes stark. The atmosphere turns quiet. Finally, the music provides a blast to eardrums. The energy tops the charts. What was my first reaction to the music? Well to be frank, I could not believe two members of At the Drive-In created this. Yes, the energy and the guitar riffs are there, but the feeling never felt so right. Unlike future released, there are no breaks within the songs. It is a rush to the head that think the song is finally dying down, slowly crescendos up to chords that were never stricken so boldly. Just like that, the song blows past like it were only a minute long.
Concertina begins as loud as the title implies with four chords crashing and then immediately slows down into a beautiful verse. Cedric speaks the language he knows best in this song, which ultimately would follow him throughout his career with The Mars Volta, and pulls it off at just the right time. The chorus erupts with the vocals and instruments flowing throughout its entirety. It drifts off into a well-written bridge which fortes Omar’s talent at guitar. Now it may not be a mind-blowing solo, but for the contents of the song, it could not work any better with one another. As it trails off, it ends as loud as it began and then begins the final movement.
My sole problem with the last song is the title,
Eunuch Provocateur. This is what begins the most ridiculous song titles ever written extravaganza that The Mars Volta was encountered. Anyway, the intro to this song is what really rubs off the wrong way with me. It simply does not sound like The Mars Volta, nor does it exactly go with the song until the bass comes in. The distortion setting on the guitar is what throws it off. When the drums are entwined, the song kicks off with sheer power. The bass drives the backbone of this song with Cedric’s vocal effects accompanying.
Eunuch Provocateur smoothly rolls along and non-stop. With the final chorus, it comes to a halt and a different beat and different sounds carry on to finish the album. Nevertheless, as one might skip the end of the song or merely change the CD, I choose to listen to it until the end. The reason is simple; I need to calm down after such an intense album filled with classy excitement.
There it is, the ‘fastest’ nineteen minutes that I have encountered. As the journey of the album ends, I think to myself. Why did they release only three songs? The reason is that that was just a preparation step for what was coming; their epic release De-Loused in the Comatorium. The Mars Volta’s reign in progressive rock begins.
