When Mars Volta member Jeremy Ward died shortly before the release of their debut album, some heartlessly snickered about the relevance of a "sound manipulator" passing on. After all, it's not like the guy was playing a guitar or bass, right? But after forging numerous times through the dense De-Loused in the Comatorium, the severity of the loss screams blatantly; The Mars Volta focus most of their energy on sound manipulation. Watery vocals, phased synths, reverbed guitars, reversed bongos, and countless other dub twiddlings drench each busy, triathlon-long song. Ward is the second person close to The Mars Volta who has died. Julio Venegas, a close friend of the band's, committed suicide in 1996, and as the media has repeatedly pointed out, De-Loused in the Comatorium is supposed to be a chronicle of his life and death. This is a monumental case of the media blindly reviewing off their press kits - there's absolutely no way of gleaning this story/idea/topic/concept/whatever in the hilariously awful, sub-Burroughs, refrigerator-magnet montage of dark PSAT words that make up this album. The song titles - “Drunkship of Lanterns", "Televators", "Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt" - merely hint at Comatorium's purblind "poetry." Follow Venegas' footsteps as he makes his "ritual contrition asphyxiation half mast commute through umbilical blisters and boxcar cadavers!" Weep while he's "rowing shit smells for the dead"* before the "pinkeye fountain"* and "three half-eaten corneas!" At least I think that's what happened. The only sensible summation of Venegas' demise seems to be that he proclaimed, "Now I'm lost," then "searched" for "something" for a "long time," then cried "Is anybody there," and finally "took" the ol' "veil cerpin taxt." Huh. Reprinting these lyrics in the liner notes might have helped to clarify the story, but that could as easily have ruined the experience - dissecting the cryptic babble is half (or more) of the fun. These lyrics, like At the Drive In's before them, are pure stream-of-consciousness. From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5117-de-loused-in-the-comatorium/
