Antemasque is the eponymously named debut of the band of Omar Rodriguez Lopez, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Dave Elitch;* all previously played (guitar, vocals and drums, respectively) in The Mars Volta. While sharing much the membership of the Mars Volta, the dynamic of Antemasque is the much more immediate. No song on the album breaks the five minute threshold. In many ways Antemasque resembles a more mature version of another Lopez/Bixler-Zavala projects, At the Drive, in that the album is oriented much more toward hard grooving punk rock rather than psychedelia.
While the album draws heavily on punk and classic rock, it sounds fresh. Most songs are fast and raucous, featuring clever yet straight forward guitar and drum work and vocals more raw, grainy and aggressive than the majority of Bixler-Zavala’s work with The Mars Volta. While there are hooky punk tracks on the album like the songs “50,000 Kilowatts” there are still occasional atmospheric and progressive moments within the concise song structures, an example being the tracs “I Got No Remorse”.
Antemasque deserves commendation as a project all it’s own and in order to enjoy it, it is necessary to shed the expectation of a psychedelic trip-out, one might associate with The Mars Volta. While the album is an upbeat, aggressive work, that doesn’t ever bore, one might complain that all the songs are of a similar tempo, even the acoustic track “Drown All Your Witches” is still a somewhat fast number. That being said in this day and age where everything seems to need to be understated to be sincere, this return to punk aggression is a somewhat forgivable sin especially when combined with some of the progressive techniques employed on the album. All in all Antemasque is a concise rocking effort.
*Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame provided Bass for the album, although he is not listed as an official band member.
