Label: Universal Records
Released: January 29, 2008
The Mars Volta really scaled things back for this one. Gone are the super-long songs (the longest here is comparatively radio-friendly at nine and a half minutes). All sarcasm aside, they run completely wild with music that’s almost impossible to follow, yet just as impossible to ignore. On previous efforts, their bold explorations have never broken down, pushing to the very sonic limits of rock music. The Bedlam in Goliath, while it too reaches the upper atmosphere of experimentation, does get lost and confused at points. For the first time, the Mars Volta may have pushed too far or, more likely, not held on tight enough for their own ride.
Right away, “Aberinkula” makes no secret that the band intends this album to challenge the boundaries they had continuously pushed on their previous albums, particularly Amputechture. With its near chaos of manic virtuosity at full tilt, it’s still possible to pick out their love for Mahavishnu Orchestra and Ornette Coleman. They seem to bring things back to this world on “Ilyena,” but even that ultimately goes bananas as well. When “Tourniquet Man” also devolves into the nearly unlistenable (or completely unlistenable, depending upon your tolerance), the band might have given up too much control.
Still, their ability to mash-up Latin and thrash and intersperse it with spacey prog on “Ouroborous” or to transition the funk-infused energy of “Cavelletas” into Black Flag guitar noodling is amazing. In fact, the influence of Greg Ginn’s playing on Omar Rodriguez-Lopez pops up in a few places and speaks well of both Ginn’s underrated playing and Rodriguez-Lopez’s ability to recognize it and incorporate it into his own seemingly boundless bag of tricks.
Always pushing, the Mars Volta find a home for Middle Eastern and classical, free jazz, prog, metal, punk and probably every other style under the sun in the boiling pot that is The Bedlam in Goliath. While there are a few moments when the music may crumble under the weight of its own ambition, Omar and company still hold the mania together over the course of the album even if the music can be as esoteric as the lyrics. The closer, “Conjugal Burns,” breaks into free jazz and spacey electronics toward the end, but returns to its structure with about a minute to go as if to assure us that, despite the meandering ride, the Mars Volta is very much in control of the destination.
Rating: 9/10
The limited promo EP that many record stores were giving away (every store in my area was out of them by the day after the release) contains a cover of the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd tune, “Candy and a Currant Bun.” The Mars Volta certainly put their stamp on the song, but it’s more for the serious Volta fan (do they even have casual fans?). Sometimes, too many crazy geniuses spoil the soup. The really great thing about the EP is that it’s a CD on one side (that also contains the video for “Wax Simulacra”) and vinyl (yeah, I said VINYL) on the other. That’s as crazy cool as the band themselves!