"The comparisons are what they are. We don't pay much attention to them," explains Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, axe smith, co-founder and producer of the band. "I think we're comparable to a whole bunch of other bands, but Zeppelin seems to be the most prevalent. So many bands draw from and get compared to Led Zeppelin, but so many bands also draw so much from bands like Black Flag and Fugazi, maybe without even knowing it, but hardly ever get compared to them," he explains with just a hint of callousness.

After speaking with Rodriguez-Lopez at length, I'm enlightened as to why certain shortsighted claims about both his band and himself can easily stir him up. For so much of his life, he's battled to be more than the tags imposed upon him.

Having moved from his native land of Puerto Rico to South Carolina as a child, Rodriguez-Lopez spent his formative years in a state of confusion, questioning his identity. Thanks to the area's local folk, he bore the brunt of many a heartless comment and racial slur.

"I had to get used to the good ol' boys criticizing the way I spoke," he states before expanding upon the fact that the bronze color of his skin and the nature of his loosely coiled mop would oftentimes earn him the title of "spic." Even his teachers contributed to the fogginess, assuring Rodriguez-Lopez that "Rodriguez" was a long enough last name; "Lopez" wasn't necessary. At the dawn of his teenage years, the bewildered adolescent and his family would relocate once again.

El Paso, Texas Ð Though still a racial minority as compared to the predominantly White and Mexican population, it didn't take long for Rodriguez-Lopez to find his niche. "It was just a small circle of people in El Paso that were big into music," he recalls.

Rodriguez-Lopez found himself playing in a band alongside some of the older musicians in town. It was at his band's rehearsal space where he would eventually come to meet Cedric Bixler-Zavala.

"The band that Cedric was practicing with would be leaving as my band would be arriving. Just looking at one another, there was an instant connection," he recollects.

Plutonic love at first site? Maybe. Whatever it was, a revolutionary friendship had found its footings under a garage roof in the middle of this dusty, border town.

1994 marked the inception of one of the duo's first musical endeavors, a discordant, jagged rock outfit better known as At The Drive-In. Their first release, a three-song ode to their hometown, Hell Paso, showcased the band in raw form, with Bixler-Zavala shouting his most unambiguous lyrical content to date. "Do you know yourself? / Do do do company policy / Do do do all rights reserved / Do do do funds are pending/ Do do do you're a sales figure," he belts on "Red Planet".

Such words are a far cry from "Neo infidels Ð Lets plug them in / Neo-polygraphic trip chords / Centrocircuiphobia the fallacy" which would be penned almost a decade later for "Cut That City," the lead track on The Mars Volta's first release, the Tremulant EP.

Years of incessant touring and recording would follow Hell Paso, earning the quintet a reputation as one of the hardest working bands in rock 'n' roll. When they weren't crisscrossing the nation, they were in the studio. Each release saw the band drifting more and more from a traditional punk sound toward something more eclectic and definitive. Rodriguez-Lopez's riffs toned up while Bixler-Zavala's style became more flamboyant and distinguished.

By the time Relationship of Command (2000) was released, everyone from indie snobs to Lenny Kravitz was name checking ATDI. The ultrasonic whirlwind of rumbling percussion, flagrant riffage and commanding vocals that had become At The Drive-In was now a part of pop culture with "One Armed Scissor" being broadcasted on mainstream radio and its video on MTV. The press had championed them, as they were featured in everything from D.I.Y. zines to Rolling Stone. Countless post-hardcore acts imitated Bixler-Zavala's mic slinging and Rodriguez-Lopez's onstage acrobatics. After seven years of hard work had resulted in some degree of stardom, the band decided to take their next big step Ð to pull the plug.

"Playing in the world of hardcore and punk can be binding. Kids in the scene have a preconceived notion of what it means to be punk and hardcore," explains Rodriguez-Lopez of his experience with the band. "I think people like mars Cliff and Fela Kuti were punk rock because they did something different," he argues in a non-condescending fashion. Coming off by no means as an elitist, Rodriguez-Lopez's attitude toward the topic is based on his own sense of unfulfillment. It was ultimately that feeling that would lead to the disbanding of ATDI as they approached critical success.

Fast forward to 2003. A year and a half has passed since the announcement of ATDI's "indefinite hiatus," yet Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala are making headlines once again. Industry and fans alike are abuzz with talk of De-Loused in the Comatorium, The Mars Volta's debut full-length. Earlier that year, the aforementioned Tremulant EP had been released, whetting the appetite of ATDI's cult following. That June, De-loused dropped. The Rodriguez-Lopez/Bixler-Zavala duo had once again raised the bar on modern rock. The record, released as a joint effort between Universal Records and Rodriguez-Lopez's own label, GSL (Gold Standard Labs), not only floored ATDI diehards, but also converted a new wave of believers.

With producer Rick Rubin behind the boards, Flea on bass and a cameo from Frusciante on De-loused, there was little chance that it would add up to anything less than a masterwork. The relationship with the Red Hot Chili Peppers started back when Rodriguez-Lopez and Frusciante met at a Defacto (Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala dub reggae side project) show.

"We were standing by the side of the stage watching Autolux, and we just started talking and became very good friends right off the bat," states Frusciante of his first encounter with Rodriguez-Lopez.

"What they're doing with combining the energy of punk rock and progressive rock," Frusciante stutters, "I never agreed with the media's perception that those two kinds of music were opposite or something. In L.A., it seemed like a lot of the best punk musicians were also into prog. Like, Pat Smear, for instance, is a huge fan of The Mars Volta now, and it's like he was always a big Yes fan. A lot of us loved punk and loved progressive rock and there's never been a band that combined the two." Though Rodriguez-Lopez shuns the "progressive rock" label as much as the Zeppelin comparison, it makes Frusciante's praise no less sincere.

In support of De-loused, The Mars Volta opened for RHCP on a string of arena dates, followed by a run of smaller venues. A performance at New York City's Roseland Ballroom during the 2003 CMJ Music Marathon showcased Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez in unexpected form. The hour-long set included only four extended renditions of songs from De-loused. Bixler-Zavala halted the set after the first song to call an end to the moshing. Rodriguez-Lopez seemed to be off in his own world, wailing away on the guitar for the majority of the set. Many walked away from the show that night disappointed and confused. Had the duo softened? Was The Mars Volta becoming a jam band? Were they dissolving the dynamic that made their music so exhilarating and vital?

According to Frances, the answer is indisputably "no."

On March 1, 2005, Frances The Mute will be on the shelves of stores nationwide. All those who've waited patiently and refrained from downloading the lesser quality version of the record will experience the album the way it was meant to be experienced. On that afternoon, they will breathe a sigh of relief knowing that The Mars Volta has done it again.

I can sit here and explain to no end what Frances The Mute has to offer. I can tell you about the monumental crescendos that gather and crash before segueing into jazzy lulls and ambient electronic effects. I can offer every adjective under the sun to describe the breathtaking dynamic between Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez Ð how Rodriguez-Lopez's spine-tingling riffs complement Bixler-Zavala's haunting vocal delivery as if the two were sharing a brain. How percussion virtuoso John Theodore works with Juan Alderete De La Pena's explosive bass work to redefine the meaning of terms like "heavy" and "groove." How Ikey Owens tickles the ivory, infusing tracks like "L'Via L'Vaiquez" with more Latin flavor than the home cooking of Rodriguez-Lopez's own mother. I could go on for pages writing about every last note of this record, yet I fear that I will still fail in my attempt to convey the importance of this 77-minute epic. Its grandeur extends far beyond the reaches of its musical aesthetic.

"A lot of this record was influenced by our good friend Jeremy [Michael Ward]," Rodriguez-Lopez begins before warning me that this is not a "concept record" (another term he despises). "I was friends with him since I was 12," he continues on about his dear friend and collaborator in both the Defacto and Mars Volta projects.

Ward's passing occurred as the result of a drug overdose in May of 2004. In the months before his untimely death, his line of work led him to an item that would come to inspire Frances The Mute.

"The story is inspired by a diary that Jeremy found in the backseat of a car while working as a repo man," states Bixler-Zavala. Discovering that he had a lot in common with the diary's anonymous author, Ward let Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez in on his finding. The diary told of the author being adopted and looking for his real parents. Bixler-Zavala sums up the story as one of "abandonment and addiction," a narrative that closely paralleled Ward's own life.

While De-loused was largely inspired by the life and times of Julio Venegas, also a dear friend and a mentor to the band, Venegas had been deceased for ten years when they wrote that record. With Ward, the wound was fresh. Frances tells the story of not only the mysterious diary's contents, but also the band coping with the loss of their friend. Furthermore, it bears the fruits of Rodriguez-Lopez's revelatory time in solitude.

In his downtime between recording and touring with The Mars Volta, Rodriguez-Lopez spent months of much-needed time below the radar. Reflecting on his identity during the reclusive period, Rodriguez-Lopez arrived at personal revelation and a refined vision for his band.

"I took out all of my piercings. I shaved my head one final time and then just let my hair grow out," says Rodriguez-Lopez in regards to getting back to his "natural" state. "I went back to using my full name, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez," he states with precise accent. "My mother was so happy that I was embracing who I was Ð my roots, my heritage."

It was with this refreshed perspective that he approached the remainder of the writing process for Frances. As per his vision, Rodriguez-Lopez assumed the role of the album's producer.

"I'd worked very closely with Newport (ADTI and Tremulant producer) and Rubin during the At The Drive-In and Mars Volta sessions. In a way, they became my mentors. I felt that I'd learned enough to produce the record myself," he states confidently. As one of his priorities at the helm, he "pushed Cedric to write in Spanish" as a sign of their Chicano pride.

The only aspect of the album that fell slightly short of Rodriguez-Lopez's vision was the design of the track listing. "Originally, we wanted the album to be five tracks (all named after characters in the diary), but we couldn't do that once our label told us that they'd pay us as if it were an EP. It's the same problem that a lot of bands from the '70s faced," elucidates Rodriguez-Lopez.

Thanks to "the man," Frances The Mute's five tracks had to be broken down into twelve subdivisions. Each of the five original titles are distinguished in bold, while their components are outlined in A-B-C order, each title more obscure than the last.

"People think we're so pretentious with our music and the names of our songs. A lot of that is just stuff we thought of while we were high," laughs Rodriguez-Lopez as he demystifies their imaginative use of both existing and created terms such as "sarcophagi" and "faminepulse."

"We make our music for us," sums up Rodriguez-Lopez. Whether it's writing as a means to cope with the death of a loved one or about "how fucked up this last year has been politically," which he also claims to have inspired the album, The Mars Volta will forever be pushing the boundaries of expression.

"We went through the phase of writing about lost love and being stabbed in the back in At The Drive-In, now we want to do something more interesting," he concludes. "We push ourselves to keep it interesting and fulfilling for ourselves."

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