The Mars Volta - Scab Dates: Live (Island) We initially backed the wrong horse when At The Drive In went belly up, but as much as we enjoyed the punky Sparta's 'Wiretap Scars' it was obvious from early on that The Mars Volta were going to be a lot more interesting and time consuming. Plus we've got a soft spot for blokes with girly singing voices so the combination of complicated musical weirdness with some Rush like vocals was always going to be a bit of a winner. So we were very excited when we got hold of Scab Dates a little while ago and held it up next to our deteriorating vinyl copies of It's Alive by The Ramones and Maiden's Live After Death - the high-water marks of live releases by which everything else is judged. We're happy to report that Scab Dates more than holds its own although for entirely different reasons. Partly this is due to just how damn obtuse the Volta can be - there's no 'Gabba Gabba Hey Hey' or "Scream for me, Longbeach!" here - in fact the crowd noise is peculiarly absent either buried in the mix or perhaps it's just that the fans were atomised during the opening of Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt and the band just carried on regardless of the fact that sections of the audience were imploding under the weight of so many free jazz musical changes and simply bonkers sci fi/suicide influenced lyrics. Actually that's the only downside to the release in that we like a little 'You Can�t Do That On Stage Anymore' inspired banter when listening to something this musically charged. At times it's hard to recognise this as a live album at all although it is quite different from the earlier releases in terms of rawness. There's also a fair amount of intricate twiddling that you'll either dismiss as navel gazing or constantly loop in an attempt to stimulate your pineal gland. If you haven't come across The Mars Volta before then this isn't the best album to start with, there's only really eight tracks here and the last one clocks in at just over 40 minutes - you may want to try snorting a little before you start looking for a nice fat vein in your genitalia to play with. If you're already a fan then you're not reading this anyway - too busy trying to build the interocitor from the instructions hidden in the lyrics that will open your path to Metaluna no doubt. The biggest draw for fans is of course the fact that apart from the aforementioned Cerpin Taxt and Concertina from the Tremulant EP the only place to hear any of this up until now was live. The Volta don't feel it necessary to ape their studio releases live or record all their music in the studio... just another reason that they don't just stand out from the crowd, but rather hang in the air above them exactly the same way that bricks don't. Our recommendation is to just buy it - even if you secretly hate it at least people will think you're smart. Or you can show how little you trust us by going over to www dot themarsvolta dot com to stream the album via realplayer Don't forget that they're also curating 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' All Tomorrow's Parties and will be messing around with the likes of The Fucking Champs and Acid Mothers Temple. Brains will melt. Just something I wrote for Londonist under the music group login that I'm archiving here. [Music: Stabbing Westward - Wither Blister Burn & Peel]