Album · The Mars Volta
De‐Loused in the Comatorium by The Mars Volta
De‐Loused in the Comatorium is an album by The Mars Volta, released in 2003. 2 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 8 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Inertiatic E.S.P.”, on 4 lists with a best position of #8.
De-Loused in the Comatorium, the debut album from the Mars Volta, came out on June 24, 2003 on Gold Standard Laboratories and Universal, the sound of two At the Drive-In refugees blowing the doors off. Omar Rodríguez-López co-produced it with Rick Rubin, and it's a concept album built on a short story Cedric Bixler-Zavala wrote with sound manipulator Jeremy Ward: an hour-long saga of Cerpin Taxt, a man who falls into a week-long coma after an overdose of morphine and rat poison, with echoes of the death of El Paso artist Julio Venegas.
The music is a hurricane: Rodríguez-López's guitar frantic and dissonant, Jon Theodore's drums swinging through Latin and jazz rhythms, Ikey Owens' keyboards swirling, and Bixler-Zavala howling cryptic, dreamlike lyrics over the top. With original bassist Eva Gardner gone, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers played bass on the sessions, and the cover is a Storm Thorgerson design. It's a heavy record in every sense: Ward, heard here on his only Mars Volta studio album, died a month before it came out, apparently of a heroin overdose.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from De‐Loused in the Comatorium on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Inertiatic E.S.P. | 4 | #8 | – | 2003 | |
| 2 | Televators | 4 | #48 | – | 2004 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.