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The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath CD (album) cover

THE BEDLAM IN GOLIATH

The Mars Volta

 

Heavy Prog

3.54 | 574 ratings

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Conor Fynes
Prog Reviewer
2 stars 'The Bedlam In Goliath' - The Mars Volta (3.5/10)

Amputechture, Pt II? Yeah, not quite...

When 'The Bedlamn In Goliath' was released, The Mars Volta ranked up there as being one of my favourite bands. I was hoping for something that was going to harken back to the times of 'De-Loused In The Comatorium' or even something completely new, that was a masterpiece. Instead, what the world got was essentially an 'Amputechture' Part II release that's not even as good as the first. While it's dissapointing however, it has too many moments of interest for me to give it the one star I would like to.

The band is going in a direction where I don't think I can follow them, if they going down the path. What they have done is strip emotional feeling out of most of the music (on 'De-Loused,' there was plenty) and replaced with a latin-jazz-funk sound that while not terrible, isn't really what I want out of this particular band.

Emotion is honestly the center of any sort of music (even prog!) and with so little to be found on 'The Bedlam In Goliath' it's really turned me off to the album, and in a way, the band.

From a purely logical perspective however, the music is great. Theres a very rich atmospheric layering (the same layering that hurt the emotional side of the music in the first place) that works at times. Theres a bad problem that the band falls into however with using too many breaks from the energy... For example in 'Askepios' after 30 seconds of actual music, it falls into a noisy slum that I am always wanting to just skip through. Music shouldn't make you want to skip through parts!

What prevents this from getting the sort of rating I've been measuring it up for is that some of the music, while lacking emotion is very awesome to listen to. 'Wax Simulacra' and 'Goliath' stood out to me as being quite good. As far as marking goes, an album with a few good songs, and the rest ranging from poor to mediocre rates as a two star album.

I'm sure that this could have been alot better, with a bit more taste and attention to the details. Dissapointing, non-essential, but wasn't terrible to listen to either. 2.5 Stars.

Conor Fynes | 2/5 |

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