The Mars Volta have unearthed a new apparatus: a headlining North American tour.
The El Paso prog rockers announced their tour Friday — the same day they dropped their ninth album, “Lucro Sucio; Los Ojos del Vacio.”
The tour will kick off on Oct. 25 in Dallas before making its way to the West Coast in late November. The group will make stops at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Nov. 26 and the Riverside Municipal Auditorium on Nov. 28 and wrap up its tour with a performance at the SOMA concert hall in San Diego on Nov. 29.
This headlining tour comes right on the heels of The Mars Volta serving as special guests on Deftones’ 2025 North American tour, which wrapped on April 9 with a performance in Newark, N.J. The Mars Volta were joined by Teri Gender Bender (Le Butcherettes and Bosnian Rainbows), who sang backing vocals.
“The Widow” songwriters will hit the road to promote the sprawling new LP, which is an 18-track electro-jazz epic. “Lucro Sucio” is their third album since reuniting in 2022 — after a nine-year hiatus that began when one of the band’s founding members, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, decided to part ways with the group.
In 2009, Bixler-Zavala began dating his now-wife who introduced him the the world of Scientology. He claimed that his interactions with Scientology and Scientologists helped him kick his expensive marijuana habit.
“Friends and family were supportive at first, if that was going to be that thing that worked for me. But some were vocally opposed,” Bixler-Zavala told The Times in a 2023 interview. “I was stuck in my issues and my own bubble world. I couldn’t see past any of that.”
Bixler-Zavala’s religion had become a wedge behind the scenes when the Mars Volta broke up in 2013. His immersion in its culture alarmed friends. Bixler-Zavala and fellow founding member of the band Omar Rodríguez-López endured a stormy, off-and-on friendship (sometimes not speaking to each other, sometimes playing in shared side projects) for years after.
Describing Scientology’s role in the band’s breakup, Bixler-Zavala said, “I’ve grappled with that with great difficulty. But Omar allowed me to come back in and make amends, to own up to my past bull—. “
“It’s hard to talk about,” Rodríguez-López said, “when you love someone and worry about them like that.”
Bixler-Zavala and his wife began moving away from Scientology after they claimed in a 2019 lawsuit that the organization had began a relentless campaign of harassment and threats against them in order to intimidate them after she claimed that prominent Scientologist Danny Masterson had sexually and physically assaulted her in the early 2000s.
“Anger can really blind you and keep you from any accountability,” Bixler-Zavala said in 2023. “One of my saving graces is having [Rodríguez-López] in my life. Him being so patient with me, it’s a humbling experience. I haven’t always been that way with him, and yet he’s allowed me to make amends and own up to my past.”
“I think you have to love the decisions you’ve made, even when you’ve been wrong,” Rodríguez-López said.
Times music reporter August Brown contributed to this report.
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