Zechs Marquise

Forget the Van Halens, if you want to know about a true musical dynasty, look no further than the Rodriguez-Lopez’s! In between Omar, Marcel, and Marfred, these talented hermanos are changing the face of free-form jamming. Omar and Marcel’s Mars Volta outfit has won Grammys and made major dents on the Billboard charts. And Marfred’s ensemble, Zechs Marquise, is making big musical strides too, particularly with their new release, Getting Paid.

“We had a ton of fun making Getting Paid,” Marfred told us in an exclusive interview. “We spent a lot of time on the songs and were really happy with the end result.”

Described by critics as an “otherworldly groove album,” Paid features all of the prog rock elements that Volta fans have come to love. Zechs had previously gotten attention for their 2008 debut, Our Delicate Stranded Nightmare. Though he was proud of that work, Marfred explained that Nightmare was a much darker record and differs greatly from Getting Paid.

“Our last record was very dark and moody,” he explained. “But this one has a lot more light. It’s way more colorful and it has more energy.”

Just looking at Paid’s album cover, that’s easy to see. Featuring a combination of suited owls, elephants, gorillas, and lions, it’s got quite a bit of symbolism buried beneath the lines. Though Marfred claimed that the cover art does not contain subliminal clues, he did admit that its imagery was open to interpretation.

“Every song on this album is its own character,” he said. “We wanted the artwork on the album to fully represent that.”

As the resident bass player of the band, Rodriquez-Lopez gets quite a few moments to shine on Paid. Typical tracks on the record can run anywhere from three to eight-minutes (with plenty of monster jams included). And though Marfred claimed to love everything on the record, he did admit to having a few faves.

“My favorite one to play is ‘Mega Slap!’”  he openly confessed. “Although ‘Getting Paid’ and ‘Crushin It!’ are awesome live jams too.”

You can check out all 9 experimental tracks on Zechs Marquise’s Getting Paid, which is in stores now.  By Michael Lopez