[Review] Bosnian Rainbows - Bosnian Rainbows

Most of us know Omar Rodriguez-López for the super-prolific multi-intrumentalist madman he has become in the years after At The Drive In's break up, never really focusing in just one project at the time. Having released an album and formed a "temporary" band with every musician he has come in contact with so far, no one expected Bosnian Rainbows would become his main project in so little time.

Many fans anticipated The Mars Volta's breakup since the release of their 2009 album Octahedron, but a few hiatuses later TMV was still going, and with the incorporation of Deantoni Parks on drums, Omar and Cathy Pellow (head of Sargent House and Omar's partner in his own label) heralded the arrival of a new TMV.

At the same time, Omar adopted Teri Gender Bender's band Le Butcherettes into his own label, so it was a matter of time before both had an album of sorts. It wasn't a surprise when it was announced that the newest incarnation of Omar Rodriguez Lopez Group would feature Teri Gender Bender, but the group soon had it's own name and after a few months of silence it was announced that The Mars Volta was no more.

Naturally there's has been a lot of hype about the two bands risen from the ashes of TMV (Cedric Bixler Zavala went on to form Zavalaz with Juan Alderete and a few friends), so now that the album has dropped there's no doubt Bosnian Rainbows is anything but "a new TMV", but some elements still remain.

Their self titled debut is somewhere between Noctourniquet and Omar's experiments with electronic music in albums like Tychozorente (2010) and Saber, Querer, Osar y Callar (2012). The bass has been replaced by synths, Teri Gender Bender lays down some dark, more conventional (and often punk infused) vocals instead of Cedric's anguished wails, Deantoni plays a stripped down kit while also playing keys and Omar, surprisingly, rarely stands out over his bandmates. Every instrument has the same level of protagonism, Omar's guitar playing has become subtler in the last year to the point where he's just another part of their aural spectrum.

This new equilibrium isn't all for the good though. While the album starts with a few really solid songs, it soons begins to feel a little too flat, there's few suprises after the first three or four songs, and while there's a nice variety of tunes here it feels like Bosnian Rainbows is missing an element that raises the band above their self imposed limitations. This why I feel the strongest tracks on the record are opener "Eli", which slowly builds up into it's great chorus and "Worthless", featuring an infectious drum beat by Parks, a great "solo" by Omar and again a great outro by Deantoni in the closing seconds, along with a solid performanced my Teri Gender Bender through and through.

Bosnian Rainbows could become so much more if they let themselves shine some more individually, but for now it feels like a band whose sound still doesn't feel greater than the sum of it's parts.

7.5/10