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The Mars Volta: Drifting deeper
into unimaginable oblivion with laborious fourth album
By Jon Jacobs
January 28, 2008 | When we were last left wondering
what could possibly be going through the minds of The
Mars Volta in 2005 with the overlong and schizophrenic
Amputechture, it was clear that bandleader
Omar Rodriguez Lopez gave no more thought to his previous
band, At The Drive In, than he did to Celine Dion.
With near impenetrable structures and endless stretches
of disfigured sonic sounds capes, it appeared that the
band was more interested in alienating listeners than
entertaining them.
In response, fans and critics alike compared the album
to the darker, more unpalatable moments of their previous
works Frances the Mute and De-loused in
the Comatorium; lacking the arrangement and direction
the predecessors enlisted to ground the commotion in
cogency and logic. Yet, despite this, Amputechture
was still an impressive work, whose brightest moments
were akin to the most ingenious sections of the band's
back catalog.
While few ever questioned their unrivaled proficiency
as musicians, many began to question their sanity as
songsmiths. In 2008 with the release of their fourth
full-length LP, The Bedlam in Goliath, few
things have changed.
The way they introduce an album, however, is one of
the things that has. Unlike their predecessors, whose
opening tracks are comprised of smooth tranquility that
builds toward a leap into insanity, Goliath
bypasses the dynamics and simply nosedives into it.
Six minutes of musical self-indulgence follows: or rather,
an hour-and-15 minutes of it.
Like its predecessor, Goliath is a difficult
listen, venturing far too often into complete inaccessibility
and labeling it progressive. Melodies dart passed at
demonic speeds for a few minutes, only to shift in completely
opposite directions and leave you wondering where the
rhythm is supposed to be in the cacophony of instrumentation
and vocals. Nothing a good dose of hard drugs can't
fix.
However, unlike both Frances and Amputechture,
Goliath seems to have rediscovered the majesty
of songs clocking in at less than 10 minutes. Though
the average song length is still over five minutes,
none of the songs drifts endlessly into oblivion as
the previous two albums tended to do. While they are
just as bizarre and unapproachable, at least they end
before you feel you are going to truly lose your patience
and mind in the process.
Lyrically, singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala still chooses
to make as little sense as humanly possible, with lines
such as "I'll never perish with the albino horns of
a thousand young born. Will you drink to the depths
of my seed? And your arms will break if you touch this
fence. Praise them to this life comes to end." Poetic,
perhaps, but nearly impossible to comprehend.
In terms of musical prowess, Goliath does
not disappoint. You will still be hard-pressed to find
a band with as much mastery of its instruments as The
Mars Volta. With guitar solos and incredulous vocal
falsetto and harmonies galore, the album is, even if
for nothing besides the awe-factor, a breathtaking feat
in musical aesthetics. The problem arises when the music
simply becomes a juxtaposition of brilliance in instrumentation
and production instead of complete album of definitive
style and theme.
The Bedlam in Goliath is far from an awful album,
in fact it showcases some of The Mars Volta's most stunning
ideas, but it is toilsome, and incredibly so. If it
could be stripped down to its highlights, it would be
the one of the most astute albums in decades. But the
decadent use of overproduced noise and the frequent,
nearly inane shifts in direction make it nothing more
than an escapade in musical showboating.
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