For a musician with such remarkable longevity, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is notoriously hard to pin down. Making music for more than 20 years, he first toured Australia with At The Drive-In back in 2001. Since then, the chameleonic rocker has been Down Under almost every year – sometimes at the head of The Mars Volta, other times as a solo artist, and still more times as part of various side acts, be it Bosnian Rainbows, Le Butcherettes, or whatever else he happened to be tinkering with at the time.

“Boredom! Boredom moves you forward,” Rodriguez-Lopez tells me ahead of his latest visit. “I think there’s this mystique behind bands and behind the creative process. Music and creativity is always happening; it’s always in the air if you want to tap into it. But the other thing is that people are just looking for something to do. Some people get a career. Some people want to have sex all the time, or get fucked up. For some people it’s helping others. We’re all looking for projects to dedicate our lives to. But then usually, at some point, you get bored.

“Starting a new band is a great unknown,” he continues. “You don’t know if it’s going to work, you don’t know if people are going to like it. It’s easy to go to the thing that you know is going to pay your bills, but it’s way more exciting to be a part of life.”

Rodriguez-Lopez’s current project is Antemasque, who are taking to the stage as part of Soundwave 2015. Antemasque sees Rodriguez-Lopez reunite with his best friend and frequent collaborator Cedric Bixler-Zavala, after creative differences during their time as The Mars Volta caused a temporary split.

“It was really one of only two arguments we’ve ever had in our life,” says Rodriguez-Lopez of Volta’s break-up. “What brought us back together was the fact that there’s probably nothing that could actually split us up as people. It was just in terms of playing under that name. Cedric and I have been best friends since 1989, and playing in a band together came from our friendship, not the other way around. We didn’t have shit to do out here in El Paso, and eventually out of boredom we were like, ‘Let’s make a band.’

“It was interesting to see how it played out in the media, where it’s like, ‘They broke up! There was an argument!’ But on the inside, the astonishing thing is that we’ve only argued twice in our entire friendship.”

Once the pair had healed the rift, the most obvious question was why they didn’t just go back to being The Mars Volta. Again, the answer comes down to boredom. “We did At The Drive-In for eight years, and it sounded a certain way,” says Rodriguez-Lopez. “Then when we did something new, we were like, ‘OK, let’s not do this, this or this. Let’s explore this area, let’s explore that area.’ We did Volta for 13 years, and same thing. You get bored of 12-minute songs, 30-minute songs. So we’re like, ‘OK, let’s make really short songs, like we did when we were kids.’

“For me personally, [music] cures violence,” he continues. “I was one of those guys who would get mad and do a stupid thing, like break something in my house that I really like. This sort of backwards way of thinking; punching your fist against the wall and spraining your wrist. So for me, music alleviates that. I go in and I write something that expresses that same feeling, and it’s much more constructive. Everyone wants to punch a wall at some point, but if you can express that in a more abstract way, chances are you’re gonna connect not only with yourself, but with your fellow human beings. So it’s a really nice thing to have in your corner.”

While it’s still relatively early days for Antemasque, Rodriguez-Lopez has been pleased by the reception to the band. “We’ve only been a band for a couple of months and we’ve toured the whole world and had sold-out shows,” he says. “Especially in this day and age, with how fickle the industry [is], and people are in general, and how dumbed-down everything is, we’re really lucky to have an actual fan base who are interested in different ideas and what we’re doing. We’ve known groups all throughout these two decades who cannot get people to be interested. The fact that people even care about us punching the wall is really pretty cool.”

In terms of what the band has in store for Soundwave, Rodriguez-Lopez believes that the performance depends on the audience. “We’re gonna go up there, plug into our amps and play,” he says with a laugh. “The really cool thing about touring is that you don’t know what you’re gonna get till you get there. As a band, you can rehearse all you want, but the biggest element comes down to the energy in the room, and that you can’t plan for. It really is a collaboration with the audience. You go in with a crowd like the ones in Mexico that are so over-the-top and passionate, and you play a certain way. You go into a crowd like Japan that’s passionate but very reserved, and you play a certain way. So it all comes down to when you’re there. I can’t wait.”

Antemasqueperform at Soundwave XV,Saturday February 28 and Sunday March 1 at Sydney Olympic Park, and alongside Incubus and Le Butcherettes at the Enmore Theatre, Friday February 27.The self-titled albumAntemasqueisout now through Nadie/Caroline.

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