The Bedlam in Goliath

Background

On a trip in Jerusalem, Rodriguez-Lopez purchased an archaic ouija-type talking board at a curio shop as a gift for Bixler-Zavala. They would return to their tour bus after shows to play with it during their 2006 tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as it quickly became the band's post-show ritual. Dubbed "The Soothsayer", the board revealed stories, gave names and made demands, as the band was contacted by three different people who appeared in the form of one, who was then referred to as "Goliath". The more the band interacted with "The Soothsayer", otherworldly coincidences began plaguing the band's experience writing and recording The Bedlam in Goliath: Blake Fleming, their drummer at the time, quit mid-tour and left the band with financial troubles; Bixler-Zavala wound up needing surgery performed on his foot due to the shoes he had been wearing, forcing him to relearn how to walk post-surgery; audio tracks sporadically disappeared from the studio's harddrives; Rodriguez-Lopez's home studio flooded and was subject to multiple power outages; and the album's original engineer went through a nervous breakdown, leaving behind all previous work with no notes as to where anything was. The engineer who quit stated to Rodriguez-Lopez: "I'm not going to help you make this record. You're trying to do something very bad with this record, you're trying to make me crazy and you're trying to make people crazy."

Rodriguez-Lopez was on the brink of starting the recording from scratch, but eventually kept on after recruiting Robert Carranza as a replacement engineer, along with assistance from Lars Stalfors and Isaiah Abolin. Midway through the recording sessions, Rodriguez-Lopez broke "The Soothsayer" in half and buried it in an undisclosed location as an attempt to undo the curse and halt the unforeseen tragedies. Rodriguez-Lopez swore never to give away the location of the burial, and also asked the band not to speak of it again during the remainder of the album's production.

The song "Soothsayer" contains field recordings that Omar recorded in Jerusalem. The recordings are a mixture from the Jewish quarter, the Muslim Quarter and the Christian Quarter.

Recording process

Recorded and mixed at Ocean Way Studios in Hollywood and Rodriguez-Lopez's home studio in Brooklyn, New York, song material for The Bedlam in Goliath dates back to April 2006 when demos were first written. Without a stable studio drummer after the three consecutive losses of Jon Theodore, Blake Fleming and Deantoni Parks in a single year, the band was introduced to then 24-year-old Thomas Pridgen, whose youthful presence—as described by Bixler-Zavala—had given The Mars Volta new life. Rodriguez-Lopez worked with Rich Costey to finish the album in a three-week stretch, assisted by Shawn Michael Sullivan and Claudius Mittendorfer as editors.

In an interview, Carranza described the recording process for The Bedlam in Goliath stating that no more than three takes an hour were recorded, as a way to soak in what was recorded and to hear the differences, which in turn improved the general mood and atmosphere of the album's creation. Elaborating on the method, Carranza stated that "when van Gogh was around he wasn't just painting, painting, painting. I'm sure he took a step back once in a while. You should do the same when you're recording."

The string quintet on "Soothsayer" was recorded on Wednesday, June 6, 2007 at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco.

Eventually the band decided in favor of Wax Simulacra as the first single:

Themes

Bixler-Zavala incorporated themes and names into the lyrics that were taken from messages given by "The Soothsayer". It also includes excerpts from poems that were found attached to the ouija, describing a love triangle between a woman, her daughter and a man in a Muslim society, along with an honor killing involving these people. Each song reinterprets the relationship in some shape or form, and as a good luck charm to counteract the cryptic themes, Bixler-Zavala incorporated elements of the Afro-Caribbean religious tradition Santería into the lyrics as a "protective skin" to protect the band.

The album ultimately serves as an attempt to artistically reverse their perceived bad luck by "setting traps" for the listeners to use as a way to undo what "The Soothsayer" had brought upon the band. To aid the concept, vinyl editions of the album contain the band's own version of the ouija inside the gatefold.

Webisodes

Four webisodes were posted on The Mars Volta's official website, depicting the band in various and sometimes humorous situations.

Cover artwork puzzle

A scrambled picture puzzle was put up on the official website featuring the front cover artwork for The Bedlam in Goliath. If solved, a free MP3 download of The Mars Volta performing a cover version of "Back Against the Wall" by the Circle Jerks was available.

Goliath: The Soothsayer

Based on the events that took place during the creation of The Bedlam in Goliath, the online game Goliath: The Soothsayer was released via Amazon through January 2–29, and later made publicly available at Newgrounds on January 29, 2008. Developed by Ben Leffler of Leffler Web Design, the game is described as a horror/supernatural "point 'n' click".

2008 club tour

A ticket presale was announced on the band's website for a New Year's Eve show at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, California, promoted with flyers that featured exclusive The Bedlam in Goliath artwork illustrated by Jeff Jordan. The band would then announce a following January club tour in 2008 where they would then debut new material from the album for the first time prior to its release.

USB flash drive

The album was also released on a limited USB flash drive that resembled a ouija board planchette. While primarily containing The Bedlam in Goliath in its entirety, the flash drive unlocked a variety of bonus material on the 29th of each month throughout 2008. The content included webisodes, concert footage, limited edition wallpaper, b-sides and unreleased tracks.

VinylDisc Single

In some U.S. record stores, a free 5" VinylDisc of The Mars Volta's cover of Pink Floyd's "Candy and a Currant Bun" was given away with purchase of the album. The VinylDisc is a new format that has a digital side and a vinyl side. One side plays in a CD player, while the other side plays on a turntable. The vinyl side contains the Pink Floyd cover "Candy and a Currant Bun", while the CD side contains the audio track for "Candy and a Currant Bun" as well as the "Wax Simulacra" video as enhanced content. It also comes with a removable foam spindle insert to switch between CD & vinyl.

Best Buy Exclusive

Best Buy shipped the album with a download code for exclusive tracks, "Pulled to Bits" and "Birthday", as well as a free bonus DVD with 20-minute concert footage of "Cygnus....Vismund Cygnus", filmed in Australia in 2007. However, many of the DVDs were unplayable, the codes expired after a certain amount of time, and the downloads (being in secure WMA format) were not Mac compatible.

Vinyl release

The 2x12" vinyl version of the album was released on June 10, 2008. A 7" vinyl accompanies the double LP. It is in the shape of a planchette, and features a previously unreleased track called "Mr. Muggs", named after Jim Jones' pet Chimpanzee. The double LP is half red and half black.

Reception

The album so far has a score of 66 out of 100 from Metacritic based on "generally favorable reviews". Jason Pettigrew of Alternative Press gave the album all five stars and called it "the first great record of 2008." John Hanson of Sputnikmusic gave the album a score of 4.5 out of five and called it "simply an immense album." Uncut gave it a score of four stars out of five and called it the band's "most digestible record yet." Blender also gave it a score of four stars out of five and said, "Never before have these kings of experimental metal sustained such pulse-quickening energy, honing their tricks--cryptic lyrics, cliffhanging cries, spine-twisting rhythms--into a screaming arrow of sound." Gary Graff of Billboard gave it a favorable review and said, "Most of the time, however, the band makes a righteous racket that straddles the worlds of prog rock, funk, fusion jazz and world music, with Eastern motifs spicing 'Aberinkula' and a bit of cosmic blues making its way into 'Conjugal Burns.'" Vibe likewise gave it four stars out of five and said, "Rarely does rock music feel so simultaneously orchestrated and raw." Shilpa Ganatra of Hot Press gave it a positive review and said, "The manner in which the group weave complex musical tapestries is certainly impressive from a purely technical perspective, but you suspect that they were a lot more fun to assemble than they are to listen to."

Other reviews are average, mixed or negative: Q gave it a score of three stars out of five and said "There's greater scope here [more] than ever before, with the gentle Ilyena providing space before Cavaletta's riot of detuned radios, car alarms and struggling internet connections." The Observer also gave it a score of three stars out of five and said, "The converted will no doubt welcome their current interest in Middle Eastern superstition, plus intricate tunes such as 'The Second Coming'. Outsiders, however, may remain sceptical." Under the Radar gave it a score of five stars out of ten and said it "ultimately sounds like The Mars Volta, nothing more and nothing less." Andy Beta of Paste gave the album two-and-a-half stars out of five and said that "even the highest highs soon crash and dissipate, wallowing once more in a proggy bog." Austin Powell of The Austin Chronicle also gave the album two-and-a-half stars out of five and called it "a black hole of esoteric expressionism, as baffling as it is brilliant." Travis Woods of Prefix Magazine also gave it a mixed review and called it "rut music and The Mars Volta are still stuck in it; even if they’ve managed to avoiding digging themselves any deeper with Goliath’s frenetic lateral slides into pseudo bedlam, momentum is only momentum if you’re going somewhere." Hipster of Tiny Mix Tapes gave it a score of two stars out of five and called it "an exhausting and overwhelming effort that fails to leave any tangible impression." Jason Keller of Now also gave it two stars out of five and said the Mars Volta "sound like a band becoming a bit too comfortable in their niche."

Dave Simpson of The Guardian gave the album only one star out of five and said, "The 'songs' (a relative concept on planet Mars Volta) sound as though they are competing to unleash as many prog-rock cliches as possible: portentous guitar riffs and twiddly bits are interspersed with all manner of atonal wind instruments and sonic pomposities." Dave Hughes of Slant Magazine also gave the album a score of one star out of five and said that it sadly "takes sound and fury, signifying nothing, to new depths."

Track listing

All lyrics written by Cedric Bixler-Zavala, all music composed by Omar Rodríguez-López.

Notes

Demos

Personnel

Additional musicians