Grapthar's Song of the Day: Omar Rodriguez Lopez - 'Diente Azul'

whose music in various bands was a major influence on me in my teenage years. I first discovered him through At The Drive-In, and followed his career when he created The Mars Volta. In the years since that band broke up, Lopez has been apart of a number of side-project, including Bosnian Rainbows, a really cool, indie-ish band. He began playing guitar in his youth, and slowly developed his own style. At The Drive-In was a punk/hardcore band of sorts, but Lopez began trying to experiment with new sounds and ideas, which helped the band grow and evolve. This really continued to the extreme in The Mars Volta, where he utilized studio production to create massive layers of guitars and incredibly dense songs. His later projects are definitely more stripped down, which I think is a testament to his playing, as he is able to convey his ideas with less.

played in, but also of his solo work, of which, there is A LOT. He has released MORE than 50 albums between the years of 2004 and 2020, not including all the various collaborations and one-offs with other bands. If you're so inclined, check out his discography on Wikipedia, the list is kind of hilarious in its length. His early solo stuff was very much in the same vein as his Mars Volta material, going REALLY wild with sounds and effects, and strange, dissonant patterns, but over the last 15 years (and 50+ albums), his sound has morphed quite a bit. There are some releases that are almost entirely electronic, others that are heavily influenced by Latin jazz, and others that are more pop than anything else, though every release has some tinge of Lopez's uniqueness within it. This song comes from his 2017 album Azul, Mis Dientes, and is an interesting track as it doesn't show off any guitar shredding really, and is much more focused on the vocal part, something that isn't really common on a lot of his songs. It's catchy, but also kind of strange, which I'm definitely partial towards.