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Mars Volta Fuse It All Together

<i>The Bedlam in Goliath</i> looks at convention in the face and says,

The Mars Volta

The Bedlam in Goliath

Released on Nov 30, -0001

To say that The Mars Volta are a “niche” band would be both completely accurate and totally false. In one sense, the band's genre-bending histrionics make them that rare group for which no middle ground exists. You either love them or hate them. You can love them, hate them and then love them again, but there is no ambivalency in the intervals. Case in point: While touring for Frances the Mute, the boys in Volta were booed by their own fans when the songs went on for too long, despite the fact that the album which prompted the fans to buy tickets in the first place contains a song that wails on for more than 30 minutes. Fickle bastards.

In another sense, however, the band's furious mash-ups of prog, punk, salsa and free-form jazz make them impossible to place in easily identifiable categories. Are they a space-funk band with intervals of prog-rock and stream-of-conscious lyrics? Are they Hispanic-punk innovators for a bilingual generation? Are they, collectively, the Lindbergh baby? Fans and detractors seemed destined to debate this minutia for the rest of their lives. Destined, that is, until Mars Volta recorded The Bedlam in Goliath and took a giant crap on convention.

“Bedlam” manages to find a middle ground, however tenuous, between all the band’s excesses, and in doing so, it makes a strong case for being the band’s best release to date. Gone are the extended silences punctuated by jungle sound effects. Gone are the long, loopy jazz intervals that the band loved to place right in the middle of their best jams. Instead, the band seems to have found a renewed appreciation for their punk roots. Sure, most songs still stretch well beyond the 7-minute mark, and contain the signature abrupt tempo changes and furiously over-dubbed vocals, but this time frontmen Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez manage to infuse the songs with a greater sense of urgency and focus. “Aberinkula” opens the album with a jolt of frenetic, thrash guitar work reminiscent of their debut, “Deloused in the Commatorium.” “Ilyena” may be the closest thing to a pop song that the band has ever recorded, and lead single “Wax Simulacra” manages to borrow from punk legends Bad Brains and French Fatalist philosopher Jean Baudrillard in the span of two-and-a-half minutes.

In cutting out (some) of the excesses, the Mars Volta show they can pack a visceral punch like none other. The band would still do well to better-utilize Bixler-Zavala’s voice—his uniquely expressive falsetto is still buried under arrangements that never really let him belt out a note—but hey, one battle at a time.

Posted by Ryan Peters on Jan 25, 2008 @ 12:00 am