The Mars Volta have never been a band content to sit still, and their newest single proves it yet again. "Reina Tormenta / Enlazan Las Tinieblas" arrives as a searing preview of the group's forthcoming album, dropping just as the iconic outfit gears up to launch a North American tour that promises to be one of the most anticipated runs of the fall.

Pulled straight from the band's acclaimed fall 2025 tour, the track captures The Mars Volta doing what they've always done best: throwing structure out the window and letting instinct take over. Surging synths swirl underneath propulsive, off-kilter percussion, while the guitar work cuts through with the kind of urgency that's defined the band's sound for more than two decades now. It's dense, disorienting in the best way, and unmistakably alive, a document of a band that treats every live performance as an opportunity to reinvent its own songs in real time. Where a lot of bands sand down the edges when they capture a show for release, The Mars Volta leans directly into the chaos, and that commitment to raw improvisation is exactly what makes this single hit as hard as it does.

That commitment to spontaneity extends to the album this single is previewing, Lucro Sucio; Unfinished Business, due out November 20th. Rather than assembling a standard live record, the band pulled recordings from across their 2025 tour and handed the process over to the people who were actually in the room for it, letting fans vote on which performances deserved a permanent home on the final tracklist. It's a genuinely clever way to build a live album, one that treats the audience less like a passive market and more like a collaborator, and it fits perfectly with a band whose entire identity has always been built around unpredictability and reinvention. When it lands, it will mark the group's first live release in over twenty years, following 2005's Scabdates, which only raises the stakes for what's coming.

Fans won't have to wait until November to experience that energy in person, either. The Mars Volta kick off their North American fall tour tonight on September 8th at the Majestic Ventura Theater in Ventura, California, before winding through Arizona, Texas, Kentucky, Florida, and the Carolinas over the following weeks. The run includes a genuinely massive moment on September 12th, when the band joins My Chemical Romance for a stadium-sized show at San Antonio's Alamodome, followed by a festival slot at Louisville's Louder Than Life on September 20th. The tour wraps with a return to Mexico in late November, with a performance at Tecate Comuna on the 28th and a headlining show at Mexico City's Pepsi Center WTC on the 29th, giving fans across two countries a chance to catch the band at the peak of its current creative streak.

Between a single this ferocious, an album built directly from the hands of its own fanbase, and a tour stacked with marquee moments, The Mars Volta are proving there's still nothing quite like them working today. "Reina Tormenta / Enlazan Las Tinieblas" is streaming now everywhere, and with the tour kicking off in Ventura and a stadium date with My Chemical Romance already on the calendar, this is shaping up to be a genuinely essential fall for the band and its fans alike.

Tour Dates

8th Sept - Ventura, CA – Majestic Ventura Theater

9th Sept - Tucson, AZ – LA Rosa

10th Sept - El Paso, TX – Abraham Chavez Theatre

12th Sept - San Antonio, TX - Alamodome (w/ My Chemical Romance)

15th Sept - Charlotte, NC – Neighborhood Theatre

16th Sept - Charleston, SC – Charleston Music Hall

17th Sept - Orlando, FL – Hard Rock Live

18th Sept - Jacksonville, FL - FIVE

20th Sept - Louisville, KY (Louder Than Life Festival)

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Photo Credit: Clemente Ruiz

The Mars Volta Unleash Blistering New Single "Reina Tormenta / Enlazan Las Tinieblas"