Weird. That one word pretty much sums up Omar Rodriguez Lopez's album, Xenophanes. As the name kind of implies, Xenophanes is anything but normal, but rather, it is strange and just about as alien as you can make music with it still retaining some element of humanity. The former member of At the Drive In and Mars Volta has left those former bands behind and totally embraced his inner prog rock god here and as a result he's let it all hang out on this record of epic jams and godly guitar solos.
Uncomparable to anything except perhaps a Watchtower record involved in a head on collision with a Chick Corea Elektric Band jam session, Xenophanes is complex, technically stunning, and the musical equivalent of the following equation: x+3rty/mv(3x+y) x ywm(4v)=3xy+9z. It's maddening stuff that is atonal, melodic, annoying, amazing, and about 123 other adjectives that will confuse you and shock you. Omar has truly gone off the deep end here and recorded a prog rock jam session on Mars that's sung in Spanish and features more guitar work then the entire Joe Satriani discography. This is not a pop music record and doesn't not feature hooks or choruses but it does feature endless journeys between time and space with a ridiculously awesome amount of technical fireworks and if you've ever thought about just how good of a musician you really are, Xenophanes will humble you.
Epic and alien, Xenophanes shows Omar to be one heck of a musician. He's totally lost every punk rock influence ever and instead embraced an almost jazz like approach to writing songs. Packed with more riffs than an Yngwie album and songs that are not of this earth, Omar has written an album he can be proud of. Xenophaneswill puzzle physicists and musicians alike for decades and something tells me that's just the way Omar Rodriguez Lopez likes it.
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