The Mars Volta – the beloved prog-rock band led by vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala and electric guitar hero Omar Rodríguez-López – have launched a brand new tune, Blacklight Shine.
Accompanied by a brief movie, directed by López, Blacklight Shine is the primary new music from the band since their breakup in 2012.
The tune – which you’ll hear beneath – is an exciting, summer-ready cocktail of sounds, with Rodríguez-López setting the temper with some mild, wah-driven rhythm work on the outset.
The colourful, six-string psych-funk soundscape he paints drives the tune, which Bixler-Zavala says (opens in new tab) goals to seize the sensation of “a wave of rolling blackouts washing recollections onto shore,” and “a heartbeat that also remembers every part.”
Although the brand new tune is the primary main exercise from the Mars Volta in a decade, Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López have labored collectively extensively within the intervening years, enjoying with Flea within the alt-rock supergroup Antemasque and reuniting with their authentic band, On the Drive-In.
Rodríguez-López, for his half, additionally teamed up with Ernie Ball Music Man to create a striking signature guitar, the Mariposa. First unveiled in late 2019, the guitar contains a pair of distortion-friendly humbuckers – with particular person quantity controls for every pickup, and no tone management – and a fantastic illustrated pickguard.
In tandem with the discharge of Blacklight Shine, the Mars Volta additionally introduced a North American tour – additionally their first in a decade – set to happen this fall. Set to start with a September 23 present at The Manufacturing unit in Deep Ellum in Dallas, Texas, the tour will take the band throughout the continent, earlier than wrapping up on October 21 with a gig on the Hollywood Palladium.
For tickets and extra data on the trek, go to the band’s website (opens in new tab).
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Jackson is an Affiliate Editor at GuitarWorld.com. He’s been writing and enhancing tales about new gear, approach and guitar-driven music each previous and new since 2014, and has additionally written extensively on the identical matters for Guitar Player (opens in new tab). Elsewhere, his album opinions and essays have appeared in Louder (opens in new tab) and Unrecorded (opens in new tab). Although open to music of all types, his best love has at all times been indie, and every part that falls underneath its huge umbrella. To that finish, you’ll find him on Twitter crowing about no matter nice new guitar band you should drop every part to listen to proper now.
