{grate 3} Put your Adderall away, babies, or Mars Volta’s latest
effort will give you a motherfucking heart attack. If you’re not down with
extensive instrumentals and electronic layering so heavy Jesus couldn’t
identify half the shit they play, then stay as far away from Mars Volta as you
can get. The barrage of intense noise is so mind-numbingly thick that you’ll
either want to punch a fucking hole in the wall or do a hit of acid and run
naked through Balboa Park.
After numerous musician turnovers and member deaths, the group’s latest
installment, The Bedlam In Goliath, is a twisting voyage into the band’s
apparent “haunting.”
Totally theme-based, Bedlam relates the tale of the group’s
haunted Ouija board, picked up by guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez on a trip to Jerusalem.
In addition to providing the guys with oodles of lyrics and creative juice, the
poltergeist’s overzealous ways apparently led to the flooding of several homes
and the disappearance of entire tracks. Bullshit or not, the resulting fiasco
of pulsating beats mixes electronica, mechanical warble and Indian chant into a
buffet of sound.
The over-processed feel of Bedlam is at times delightful,
like trying to identify all the individual components of a delicious dessert.
You dig through awesome guitar riffs, looping insane lyrics, synthesized bell
chimes and the grounding presence of hectic drums. All that is Mars Volta is
here in abundant experimental shifts, shoving more and more shit into every
second of every minute of the album. But unless you’re on speed, listening to
Bedlam in one go is like having musical schizophrenia, the lyrics usually lost
in the clamor of Middle Eastern chaos.
Though successful in its avant-garde mess of rock ‘n’ roll,
Bedlam fails to create truly stand-out tracks. The songs tend to blur unless
you hunker down next to the speakers and Google the lyrics. Singer Cedric
Bixler-Zavala’s voice can also get pretty high in the register, becoming a
Weird Al Yankovic-like whine. Thankfully, Bixler-Zavala reins in his sonic
pitch for most of the album, and the instruments get to hog the spotlight. The
take-home message of Bedlam is not how beautifully crafted anarchy can be, but
whether you enjoy the in-your-face-ness of track after track of kooky RPG
lyrics and pandemonium is really up to you.