With Flea guesting on bass and the masterful drumming of Jon Theodore setting the pace, Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala drew the threads of the record together. “But challenging yourself to go further and further and further, that’s what takes will and exercise.” “Writing a song is the easiest part you can do that in your sleep,” Rodríguez-López would tell Clash magazine. Working with Rick Rubin at his Laurel Canyon-based Mansion studio, the band’s conceptual objectives crystallised as the duo-led troupe began expanding on their initial compositions. From the opening death-drive of Inertiatic ESP and the turbulence of Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of) to the shimmering, opiated lament of Televators and the disordered convulsion of the 12-minute, John Frusciante-guesting epic Cicatriz ESP, the Mars Volta’s unhinged musical universe features elements of metal, jazz and Latin, melted down and reforged into a listening experience as unforgettable as it is uncompromising.

Rejecting conventional songwriting, this new band’s sound was assembled from a disparate tapestry of genres, sonics and moods. The album, thematically and musically, conveys the internal struggle of a similarly comatose protagonist, Cerpin Taxt, and dives headfirst into a near-psychedelic maelstrom, halfway between existence and oblivion. Following a drug overdose, Venegas entered a coma for a number of years, before ultimately awaking and sadly taking his own life.

Volta’s 2003 debut hinges on a conceptual character whose story mirrors that of their late friend Julio Venegas. As Pink Floyd demonstrated on their timeless Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, illustrating the process of mental deterioration is a mission to which progressive rock’s divergent flights of fancy can ably lend itself.

Storm thorgerson the mars volta