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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 | 575 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

ichigo14
2 stars My first listen to the Mars Volta was this album that was introduced to me by a friend.

We were listening to it in a car (what a nice place to blast the tunes) and I have to say I was stirred and shaken by the huge amounts of noise the tracks made. I went home and listened to the rest of the album to review upon.

The first thing I noticed is that most of the songs don't really have a clear meaning, some are taken from biblical terms and others from complex meanings. Anyways, onto the review.

Overall, the start of this album seemed very messy and unorthodox, specially with the use of odd chords, time signatures and vocals. That said, the album didn't really change much from the messy sound, a series of completely experimental, unique sound went through the album. Not necessarily bad, but after awhile....I started getting a headache. Songs seemed to change time signatures a lot, I think I heard a dozen time changes throughout the album....a nice addition but in musical sense...it was a bit too overused....

The Bedlam in Goliath showed some nice things too, a nice experimentation with the afro-latin sounds that they are known for, however, these styles were a bit random at times. The group is very talented, despite the distortion and disorder you can truly hear that they're a well founded technical group with talent......the question is....why did they made their songs too messy? At times, the music was not very pleasing, although very technical....not very nice to the ear.

Bass and Guitar throughout the album was satisfactory, technical riffs here and there and a good work by the bassist Juan Alderete, my favorite being at the outro for the song Ilyena. Drums and percussion, a little repetitive but good....I've heard they changed drummers and the the last one was better....I guess I need to listen to previous works from the band to really get a good listen.

I have to point out something here though...the vocal work...oh man...very....unique....not bad....but not good....just too radical and sharp.....distorted, synthesized, and a way over the top. Not so much for my liking due to the fact that the vocals didn't seem to blend well with the songs.

Overall, a collection of technical songs with lots of messy stuff to go around, lots of talent but needs work on making musicality and not just a lot of technical riffs.

ichigo14 | 2/5 |

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