SCAB DATES

As an avid fan of The Mars Volta, the release of this album almost broke my little heart. I remember salivating the night before, hardly able to sleep, waiting until 9am when Tower Records opened so I could get my hand on the latest Mars Volta release. Finally a documentation of their fantastic live performances giving me the ability to enjoy those long improvised jams, strange effects, and raw energy anywhere I went. Up until then I had only a few shoddy bootlegs, and memories of the three times I had seen them live to sustain my appetite. But I had only a few measly hours to wait to fix that. And as you can tell there's a big disappointment coming, and it came with my first listen to "Scab Dates."

This album fails to capture anything of what The Mars Volta are like live. The whole thing comes across as a studio album(with incredibly poor production). They do so much cutting and editing especially on the last song that the raw energy, and even sloppiness of the live performance that the album is supposed to be capturing is lost. When they're not destroying the songs with studio effects, loops, and paste jobs, the quality of the recording is so bad that I can't hear the actual good jams going down.

Do not judge what a Volta concert is like from this album as you will be grossly mistaken. The only solid and representational performance here is of Concertina, but even then much better version exist. My tip to all, get a good bootleg instead of buying this album.