THE BEDLAM IN GOLIATH

The Mars Volta has always been a rather controversial and unorthodox band. From day one their music has been widely regarded as something very different from everything else, as something innovative and, to this day, it is very hard to disagree with those statements. Every time I seek a The Mars Volta album to spin I want something different, brutally abhorrent to the mainstream public and every time I put one of their albums I am, definitively, not disappointed. Because of that it was quite shocked when I saw so many reviews deeming the album, as one of them so eagerly said, unlistenable. By now, it is important to point out that The Bedlam in Goliath is a quite different The Mars Volta album, because it is so very acid, raw and in your face, besides being a very complicated album to listen, due to the multi-layered harmony, constant superposed melodic lines and constant polyrhythm (almost every instrument plays in a different rhythm).

Bottom line is: The Bedlam in Goliath is a very different album, even for The Mars Volta standards, but does that means that the music is bad? The only answer I can think of is no because no form of music is bad or good by itself, it depends on what the people expect from it and, by what it seems, everybody is waiting for a De-loused in the Comatorium part 2 since 2003 what, let's face it, it will never happen. Therefore, instead of looking at the past and long for something that will never happen, why not enjoy the present and hope for the future? This album is precisely that: a different form of music that should and can be enjoyed without hoping that it will sound like something that it is not .

That said, it is interesting to note that, despite what fanboys and bashers say, this album is neither an astonishing piece of art, due to its rather unique style, neither it is a pile of rubbish, because of the complicated and hard-to-gasp music. The Goliath is a very good album, despite its potential to be much more, possibly due to the large amount of problems Omar Rodriguez-Lopez had wile recording, keeping him from doing a better job with in the composition department. People just get confused with new things and think that different form is equal to different quality, specially when an album is as acid and has so much raw energy as this one is.

Share this THE MARS VOLTA review

Social review comments () BETA

---

---

Review related links

• Send comments to CCVP
• Report this review (#238744)
• Buy THE MARS VOLTA music online with PA partners
• Show all THE MARS VOLTA MP3/Stream
• Go to THE MARS VOLTA page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to The Bedlam in Goliath page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for THE MARS VOLTA related discussions