Agreed. They still are great players, but the actual songwriting declined a lot, but that's fine, happens with most bands anyway.
I discovered the band and become a fan in 2005, so I guess I'm a new fan. Anyway, for me, their songwriting and albums increased in quality in the last 5 years. I absolutely adore MP's drum parts, though (especially "Stream Of Consciousness" and "The Dark Eternal Night") - his drumming was one of the reasons I became a fan in the first place.
That said, I understand and agree with what you are saying. The Mars Volta was my favourite band in my teens. I fell in love with
Frances The Mute in 2005, and literally thought to myself:
'This band is probably going to release a dozen weird albums and I'm going to buy and love them all'Well, eventually that didn't happen
, and their albums got less and less 'weird': they stopped singing in spanish, the songs got shorter and shorter, the salsa-ish instrumentals became non-existent. Granted, they experimented with other structures/moods, and had great songs on their last albums ("Ouroborous", "Desperate Graves", "Zed and Two Naughts"). So, pretty much the same with recent DT.
(From the interviews I've read, Omar always made it clear he did whatever was on his mind, and completely disregarded formulas or repeating himself, so I guess it's understandable.)