Album Review | The Mars Volta enters the paranormal realm
Four out of five stars
Ellie Steever
Issue date: 2/4/08 Section: Arts
Nearly everyone over the age of 12 will testify that Ouija boards are fake and a waste of time. But progressive rock band The Mars Volta (TMV) obviously doesn’t feel that way.
Disbelieve what you will, but TMV’s fourth full-length effort, “The Bedlam in Goliath,” is a bowl full of secrets poured forth from the occult.
While touring with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2006, the band purchased a now-famous Ouija board nicknamed “the Soothsayer.” During the tour and the initial stages of recording for “Bedlam,” the board began to mystify the band with the demands, stories and names it supposedly gave them.
However, the Soothsayer began to curse TMV and its efforts to record with a chain of bizarre mishaps. Cedric Bixler-Zavala, vocals, had foot surgery that required him to relearn how to walk, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s, guitar, home studio burned.
Three drummers quit during the recording process (leading to the addition of Thomas Pridgen), and the original sound engineer also left after a nervous breakdown.
Eventually Rodriguez-Lopez buried the board and forbade band members to speak of it, but the pandemonium and peculiar eeriness it stirred up cannot be missed in “Bedlam.”
The band is known for its musical chaos, and “Bedlam” pushes this element to the breaking point, mainly through sheer speed. In previous TMV albums musical buildups often lead to ten-minute sections featuring feedback, guitar chirps and frog belches. In this latest album, there is no such downtime, and buildups only lead to more of that fast, hard, loud rock that makes listeners bang their heads so righteously.
“Cavelettas,” ringing in just short of ten minutes, toys with fans’ expectations for long reprieves found on earlier LPs. The musicians and production team show off their utter genius by playing with the volume on this track. Different instrument sections and sounds alternately rise and fall until the audience believes the familiar feedback solo is coming, before being whipped back into the main body of the song, ecstatic that there is nothing to fast forward through.
Distorted vocals and looped effects that TMV is so fond of show up in nearly every song, as well as wailing saxophone and string sections that remind the listener of the geographical spans that influence the music.
“Soothsayer” begins with Middle Eastern sounds and guitar melodies, eventually erupting into gypsy-infused tambourines, chimes and violins amidst the pulsing guitars and drums. To complete the foreign effect, the song ends with children’s voices singing a Catholic prayer, which is no doubt some ironic reference to the supernatural, pagan ideas that sculpted the album.
The paranormal themes found in the Soothsayer Ouija board are most lyrically apparent in “Goliath.” Bixler-Zavala’s yipping falsetto and deeper, accusatory vocals catch the listener’s attention with lines like, “I’m starting to feel a miscarriage coming on/ It’s numbing a stump/ Clearing in my throat/ And I just can’t lose grip of it.”
The single, “Wax Simulacra,” is the shortest track on the album and is all the stronger with power chords played over palpitating drums, alternatively giving way to an over-exaggerated downbeat or some fluttering sax overtone.
The recent performance of this song on “Late Night with David Letterman” did not give it justice. The vocals were given precedence over the rest of the instruments, whereas in its recorded works TMV always makes each sound just as powerful as the next.
Moreover, TMV consistently ensures that each album is as powerful and inspired as the next. Most fans can hardly say which album is their favorite, and now “Bedlam in Goliath” enters into this debate. When TMV first formed, there was no other band with the same sort of sound, and this remains true today.
But just because they have a unique sound doesn’t mean they shouldn’t keep exploring new styles. If there is anything bad to be said about “Bedlam” it is that a conceptual exploration of an idea through complex time signatures and depraved guitar mashing can form a masterpiece – but isn’t that what The Mars Volta has been doing all along?
