Heaps of hoopla surrounded the recent reunion of Led Zeppelin. In case you’ve been under a silent rock, the announcement spurred a flurry of press and renewed fan sentiment. When tickets to the quartet’s one-off show in London went up on the Internet as a lottery, so many people signed online that it crashed the server. Granted, Zeppelin stands as one of the exemplary bands in rock history, but the guys are just plain old and Robert Plant’s high-end mating call will never sound the same as it did in the days of his youth. (And indeed it must be jarring to hear the 59-year-old stallion sing the lyrics to “Dazed and Confused” now that he has grown from subject to narrator.)

But do not despair oh fans of rock ‘n’ roll music! The Mars Volta is poised to take the reigns of rock and drive the gallant steed ever forward. The band’s recent show at Terminal 5 showed the group’s gusto and stamina as the members played ebulliently for two and half hours without a break. Composer/guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López heaved rip-roaring, high-heavy prog riffs akin to an updated version of King Crimson, while singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala competed for attention with his overambitious falsetto. A traditional bass/drum setup grounded the group’s precocious tendencies, while a threesome of percussion, keys and horns rounded out the noisy assault.

Such energy is to be expected at a live rock gig; I’m sure fans of The White Stripes would try to persuade you that the duo embodies all the vigor of the genre. But consider that ensembles like The White Stripes write compositions easily grasped by any garage rock group with a distortion pedal and a four-piece Pearl set. But The Mars Volta’s daedal arrangements recall the move of jazz from dance music to the bebop style that would later elevate it into the category of art. With every unexpected meter switch, abrupt entrance by the soprano sax or impassioned yelp about a “crown of maggots” or a “mnemonic tongue,” The Mars Volta set an example for the future of rock.

Although spiced with seemingly unstructured noodlings that served as petering endings or loose beginnings to songs, the sound wall persisted from start to finish, causing the definition of each song to be lost on the casual listener. The members favored more recent tunes, weighting their set with tracks from 2006′s Amputechture and their upcoming release The Bedlam in Goliath, while merely peppering it with a few songs from their first two releases. Before launching into “Drunkship of Lanterns,” (from the band’s first release De-Loused in the Comatorium), Bixler-Zavala commented: “This next song is dedicated to the people who don’t want us to keep writing the first two albums over and over again.”

The new Goliath tracks represent the best of The Mars Volta’s extremely artful sound. The band has moved from the masturbatory ramblings found on Frances the Mute and the utterly incomprehensible arrangements of Amputechture to find a median in songs that resemble amorphous structures, but are actually grounded with an intricate foundation. Still, the band doesn’t use its aesthetic as a reason to shirk away from live performance. On the contrary, they rock out all the way; the last tune, “Day of the Baphomets,” was so massive that listening to it resembled standing in a hypersonic wind tunnel. The Mars Volta may never be as tuneful or sensual as Zeppelin, but they sure contain the spirit of the rock past and know how to apply it to the rock of the future.--Julie Pinsonneault

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