Omar Rodriguez-Lopez

As the guitarist for At the Drive-In and more recently, the Mars Volta, Omar Rodriquez-Lopez has continued to widen his musical spectrum, allowing for broader sweeps of prog and fewer limits on his experimentation. This is particularly true with his solo work, which since 2005 has been both prolific and expansive. Such is the case with Old Money, one of Rodriguez-Lopez's four solo albums planned for 2009. Song titles like "How to Bill the Bilderberg Group" and "I Like Rockefellers' First Two Albums, But After That…" suggest this is a concept album about the Federal Reserve but the album is entirely instrumental. In many ways, this is a good thing, allowing his complex prog compositions room to sputter and flow without being weighed down by vocal rhetoric. The result is a diverse and heavy album that should be filed somewhere between Hella and Zappa, which is most certainly a good thing.