The Mars Volta change-up their usual psychedelic sound by scaling back

Even if you’ve never heard of them before, the 18-year experimental, post-progressive rock history of the Mars Volta is exposed in their fifth album, “Octahedron.”

This Grammy-award winning band, first called At the Drive-In, strives to push forward with their music, making each record sound different from the last, and it really shows. Released Tuesday, Octahedron delivers up Mars Volta’s usual dramatic, psychedelic sound with simplicity and refinement. According to their web site, bandleader Omar Rodriguez-Lopez held back to “[keep] it to the core of what those songs were.”

As a first-time listener, the experience of the record can only be described as a trip. The record’s opening track, “Since We’ve Been Wrong,” is wrought with emotion, posing Spanish guitar on top of spacey synthesizer. Listeners immediately feel that you’re listening to a band pushing the limits of alternative rock into new frontiers. Octahedron encompasses the simplicity Rodriguez-Lopez described and the spacey warbling seems to set the tone for the rest of the record.

However, this new simplicity only lasts for almost six minutes of the first track. The rest of Octahedron seems to stray back toward the traditional weighty layering of sound heard on their previous records. The second track, “Teflon,” is heavy with drums and even heavier cymbals, accompanying a whiny fuzz guitar matching whiny, falsetto vocals on top of a fast, hard tempo. It is this song that really encompasses the atmosphere of the record.

Octahedron stays constant with high-range vocals that take on a wailing, mourning tone. On top of the ever-present spacey synthesizers, the record sinks comfortably into a deeply progressive, beyond-my-understanding kind of mood with seven- to eight-minute tracks. All you can really feel is an echoing, intense, almost cavernous emotion brewed about by the six-piece band.

That’s not to say that The Mars Volta didn’t do a good job. On the contrary, the album is completely different from what anyone else is releasing nowadays. The tracks maintain the band’s trademark sound while grabbing onto something new at the same time. I would have liked to hear more songs like “Since We’ve Been Wrong,” but the record is nothing to sneeze at. It definitely leaves you feeling something. What that something is, I have yet to figure out.

It is not for everyone, but it’s excellent if you want to try out something new. This track, “Teflon” and two other full tracks are available for free download on their MySpace page.