Once upon a time, a great sense of conformity befell a community of people who despite many differences shared a common bond in the interest of music. This sense cursed most of the community, sickening them with a fathomless cynicism so far reaching that there was no cure. So spoke the victims of this hellish condition "There is no music that is boundless or free; we are doomed to a lifetime of repetition and trend-following musical arts that bore and exhaust us." Some of these unfortunates even dared to say "this curse is so great; soon we will lose all interest in music itself!" Those lucky enough to not be burdened with the plague of musical boredom looked far and wide for a cure; it took a while, but eventually it was found. It was the serum known as The Mars Volta.

I went a bit biblical with the intro to this review as to many ignorant people who I have heard speak about my single greatest life passion, music, that music is never again going to be interesting, innovative, or exciting. It really is that serious. But it needn't be ever again. I've always been a fan of bands that push boundaries be they in any genre (I've spent the last week divulging in The Mars Volta, Meshuggah, and Enslaved, a pretty odd crowd) and I always tell those cynical music fans out there that with a little looking, you can find almost anything appealing and fresh at the same time. After hearing the follow-up to the genre-bending conglomerate that was The Mars Volta's debut, De-Loused in the Comatorium, I can safely say without any doubt that a person hearing this album can never mock music's eternal soul ever again.

Call me a fanatic, but music has a quality to it that should inspire fervent worship in it's amazing power to do just about anything. Rock has torn down Iron Curtains, scared entire societies of "free-minded people" (thus exposing their very hypocrisies) and done the greatest thing of all, change human minds to think in a different light.

On Frances the Mute, the Mars Volta take every known (or maybe even unknown) musical genre, perfect it, and than mix it without effort into a concoction that is cohesive yet barely contained. To make things even more mind-blowing, the Mars Volta wrap this insane musical style around a concept album, a sort of surrealist parody of the life events of former programmer/keyboardist Jeremy Ward, who died shortly after the band's first release. Ward had once found an odd diary that detailed an unnamed person's life, and strangely it was very similar to his own; both were adopted and never knew their real parents. On Frances, the TMV crafts what is in my mind a space-rock opera, an intergalactic ghost story within a ghost story. A lost soul's memory is found by a man, and the man's soul is channeled by the people who loved him, fueling their lives through their loss.

Something is definitely possessing the TMV on this album for sure. "Cygnus....Vismund Cygnus" introduces the story's protagonist (with an amusing Bond reference) and some spacey folk rock. What explodes next is a trippy funk beast with dripping guitar solos and fiery bass lines. The 13 minute tune also eclipses an amazing lo-fi guitar jam, ambient washes of peaceful bliss for frontman Cedric Bixler Zavala's vocals, and even a growing string arrangement with violins.

"The Widow" is a morose ballad for the Internet Age, and again Omar A. Rodriguez-Lopez's spacey guitaring totally blows some neurons. "L'Via l'Viaquez" is the height of the power of a confident Mars Volta. On this 12 and a half minute freak-out there are innumerable arena rock solos, bilingual (Spanish-English) vocals, and (I kid you not) keyboard laden salsa breakdowns.

"L'via" is easily one of the best songs I have heard in the last six months, and maybe ever. "Miranda, that Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore" is another 13+ minute opus that starts with minimal samples and soon leads a sinister and brooding song that will drop some jaws. It's as if the spacey rock of previous TMV efforts channeled the lifeform of E.T. and now it's transformed into the acid-spewing Alien, hunting marines in a dark spaceship lost in the stars. The half hour epitome of genius is "Cassandra Gemini", which encompasses (among too many things to list) a sneering set of vocals from Zavala, voice box effects, jazzy flutes and noir guitar work, and a favorite of mine that I will describe as a piano being pushed down the stairs with an ambient guitar into the umbra reaches of a black hole. Let's not also forget enough crazy brass section solos to make Mr. Bungle crap their pants.