After nearly a year of speculation, new studio recordings from The Mars Volta have finally been confirmed for 2012, with a solid date for a new song, and a tentative date for their sixth LP.
As confirmed on Sony’s official Playstation Blog, the soundtrack for the baseball game MLB 12 The Show will contain a brand new track from The Mars Volta, entitled Zed And Two Naughts. The blog even provided a screenshot of the game, demonstrating its soundtrack menu, where the Volta song is clearly visible:
Fans quickly took to singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s YouTube page to ask him whether the track was a new composition, or a cover of the song of the same title by Finnish group The Vacuum Cleaners. Cedric responded that the former was true, leaving no doubt: “Yes, we do have a song on that video game and it is from our new album. It is not a cover. I was just made aware of the Vacuum Cleaners song w/ the same title but they have nothing to do with each other.” As the game comes out on March 6th, the song Zed And Two Naughts will certainly be available by then.
There is also an ongoing, as-of-yet unsupported rumor that the LP will be called In Absentia, and is set for release on March 27. Since the the album has been pretty much finished for months now, the date seems plausible enough – even a little late, perhaps. Assuming that Zed And Two Naughts will be the first single, and that it will be out by early March, it’ll fit with the rumored LP date as well.
What doesn’t fit is the title In Absentia, given that progressive-rock act Porcupine Tree already released a pretty popular LP with the same title, almost ten years ago. However, anyone who’s spent a considerable amount of time reading Mr. Bixler-Zavala’s posts on his YouTube channel is aware that the singer dismisses the prog-rock genre, almost in its entirety (not unlike Radiohead and Pink Floyd used to do). Therefore, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the singer had never even heard of Porcupine Tree, or couldn’t give less of a shit for using the same title. Either way, we’ll probably know soon enough.
We remind you that The Mars Volta have already debuted most of their sixth album live. Songs Nocturniquet, The Whip Hands, and Jacob Van Lennepkade can be found here, and I’m Not Running Away AKA Aegis, Trinkets Pale Of Moon, and Walk The Plank AKA Moloch Walk can be found here (all titles presumed to be working titles or nicknames, and thanks to commenter Armando for the updated titles).
In other news, the second 7″ single from Cedric’s side-project Anywhere is available for pre-order here.
Thanks to reader armedelmo for the tip.
