After their 2013 split left fans in shock, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López reveal how the Church of Scientology drove them apart – and inspired their surprise new album
hen Cedric Bixler-Zavala joined the Church of Scientology in 2009, he thought of it as lightly as “signing up for a yoga class or a self-help group”. Having been introduced by his new wife and friends, the frontman of the revered US rock band the Mars Volta underwent an induction process designed to tackle his. He found it helpful until he realised it came at a price. “Scientology becomes habitual, [a] crutch,” he says.
Bixler-Zavala admits that the religion put him “up on a cloud” from which he looked down on everyone around him, whom he considered to be “stuck” without the religion. He decided to try to turn them on to Scientology despite knowing that the response would probably be negative.. Since forming the Mars Volta in 2001 from the ashes of punk band At the Drive-In, the pair had recorded six fiendishly complex concept albums, drawing together jazz, metal, Latin music and prog.
Both bristle at the mention of Scientology. Not only is it one reason behind their split, but it also gives their new album its theme. In 2016 and 2017 four women, including Carnell, accused Danny Masterson, a Church of Scientology member and star of the US sitcom That ’70s Show, of raping them in the early 00s. Carnell – then Masterson’s co-star and girlfriend – alleges she was unconscious during one of these assaults.
Heavy subject matter is nothing new for a group whose founding mission was to “honour our roots, honour our dead”. Previously, however, these stories were abstracted or converted into fantastical narratives. Bixler-Zavala’s new lyrics, he says, “take the air out of the room” and are, for him at least, unusually clear and to the point. “I’ll shine the blackest light to the culprit on all fours,”I’m not bound by genre.
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