It's been three years since the noisiest little prog-rock band in Texas put out a record, but they haven't been slacking. Their newest is a "future punk" experiment based on a comic-book villain (Solomon Grundy) and a Greek myth (Hyacinthus). Ner-dee! The results send the band's usual tornado time signatures through some serious synth-and-gear grind; "Aegis" suggests Radiohead as emo metal. Some songs explore emulsive alienation (see "In Absentia"), but TMV are at their best dabbling in shades of aggro: On "The Whip Hand," shrieker Cedric Bixler-Zavala imagines himself "a land mine" ready to "blossom." You don't wanna mess with an art rocker who has a latent fondness for the smell of napalm in the morning.

Click to listen to The Mars Volta's 'The Malkin Jewel'

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• Random Notes

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.