When the Mars Volta rose out of the ashes of At the Drive-In, many fans and critics were disappointed in the noodly, indulgent psych soundscapes of De-Loused in the Comatorium.

But when it came time to record its follow up, they paid those complaints no mind. Instead, Frances the Mute leans even harder into all of De-Loused’s idiosyncrasies in an even more ambitious record of prog jams and noise rock.

For all of the wildness of their debut, the songs were pretty straightforward. They had verses and choruses, even if there was a freeform jam in the middle of it. And through the entire disc, Cedric Bixler weaved a narrative about a man traversing through an alternate dimension after a drug overdose.

Frances the Mute takes nearly every element of De-Loused and turns it up to eleven.

You want a bizarre narrative? Vismund Cygnus is a drug addicted, HIV positive male prostitute looking for his mother, Frances, who is held captive by a corrupt faction of Catholic priests.

You want lengthy jams? Every song is marked with either extended solo sections or passages of avant-garde noise—which were reportedly painstakingly composed ahead of time by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. “The Widow” could have been a huge radio hit were it not for the tape loops and ambience that makes up half of its running time. “Cassandra Gemini” is a thirty-two minute long prog epic in the tradition of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” or Can‘s “Bel Air.”

While De-Loused teased a bit of Latin influence, Frances the Mute dives in head first.  “Cygnus…Vismund Cygnus” opens the album with a frantic prog groove and a Spanish-language chorus. “L’Via L’Viaquez” jumps back and forth between Santana-on-speed and full on rumba, shifting into noise collage several times across its twelve-minute runtime. “Miranda, That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore” starts with four minutes of ambient noise that gives way to a song ripped out of a Spaghetti Western.

As for ambition, there are only five songs here (the CD broke “Cassandra Gemini” up so it wouldn’t count as an EP), stretched across seventy-one minutes. Motifs reappear throughout the disc (it ends with the same acoustic guitar section that opens the record, for instance).

It’s easy to dismiss it as bloated, self-indulgent, and vapid—Pitchfork gave it a 2 out of 10. But to dismiss this record is to miss one of the most massive and impressive statements in the history of progressive rock.

It’s also worth mentioning—since this is a vinyl blog—how well the vinyl pressing is pulled off, especially for a record that seems impossible to translate to the limitations of the vinyl format. This is a triple disc set, with a blank sixth side (the original pressing had an etching, but those are p r i c e y). Every side but the last one ends with a locked-groove, letting the noise segues loop until you take the needle off. “Cassandra Gemini” is split between two discs, and the loop is in the middle of a guitar riff, and it loops perfectly. It just goes to show the care and attention that the Mars Volta gives to their work.