Review Summary: Ladies and gentlemen, the first ever fourth-album sophomore slump.
Back when
The Bedlam in Goliath came out in 2008, all the praise surrounding it left me somewhat confounded... and it looks like 5 years later, nothing has changed. In fact, after hearing it for the first time, I went back and looked at the reviews again, and seemed to notice a trend: all of the positive reviews seemed to state something along the lines of "I love the fact that there's more fast-paced/heavy songs on this record". And as much as I am a fan of heavy and fast-paced stuff, give me quality over speed any day. And I couldn't think of an album that showcases the importance of quality over quantity more than
The Bedlam in Goliath.
What made The Mars Volta such a standout band was that their first three albums were so different from each other while still sounding like The Mars Volta. As long as there were their "single-strings over power chords" policy, the jazz elements and wailing vocals, it still sounded like the Volta. And on
Bedlam, it seems as if they took the "fans"' cries of "We want De-Loused 2!" a bit too seriously. In fact, this is pretty much what De-Loused would have sounded like if it sucked.
Bedlam's biggest problem is that it sounds like the band has completely run out of ideas and decided to pander to people stuck in 2003 just to stay "relevant". Whereas
Amputechture and
Frances were full of surprises that nobody listening to them for the first time could expect, such as the salsa breakdown in "L'Via", the spoken-word interlude near the beginning of "Cassandra Gemeni" or the slowed-down Spanish acoustic track "Asilios Magdalena", this album sounds predominantly like old demos scrapped up and thrown together on an album. There's little to no variety in the tracks. Nearly every song on the album sounds the same- a first for the Volta. There are also some moments where the vocal takes really fail on pitch and the band gets off-beat, which leads me to believe the album was completely rushed. The result is one gigantic mess- and while Volta's music has always been messy, but were always able to make it sound consistent with their sheer professionalism, here it's a mess that sees as if the band has no idea what they're doing, so they'll just throw together De-Loused out takes haphazardly.
Another disappointment is the lyrics. Now nobody in the right mind should accuse the Volta's lyrics of being comprehensible, but they had a certain charm. The album is apparently connected by the theme of an ouija board bought while in travels in Israel, that lead to a series of spooky incidents in the band members' lives- such as Omar spraining his foot and having to re-learn to walk, and the studio being flooded. As a fan of creepy stuff, this would be cool if such theme wasn't wasted. It's hard to tell this is a concept album at times because the lyrics, along with Cedric's seemingly tired vocal performance, seem as if Cedric is just babbling to himself. In fact, I wonder how he managed to deliver lines like "
I foamed at he mouth while the lights twinkled at me" or "
The hourglass pokes at the ribs of my cage" with a straight face, even. If you thought the Rosalynn Carter reference in "Tetragrammaton" was hilarious, there's lines here that put that to shame.
So is there anything to like about this album? Well, quite a few things. The album opens strongly with "Aberinkula" which is energetic and full of jazz-metal gusto that shows the band cares about getting right to the point from the beginning. If any particular part of the song stands out, it's the last 2:30 of the song, a coda that completely changes the song's direction to a more "Jazz meets metal" style complete with a catchy riff and a couple saxophone solos that make for a killer ending to the song. The next two songs are excellent too, "Metatron" being an exciting and adventurous 9 minute epic full of time signature changes and eerie vocal harmonies that makes it feellike an adventure. "Ilyena" is catchy and musically reminiscent of "Viscera Eyes", with an excellent slow intro that explodes into pure catchiness. This is also the first song where Pridgen's drum skill is evident and he delivers several amazing drum fills, and at times the snare even sounds like a firecracker exploding. And then there's the tenth track "Ouroboros". Think a song you'd hear in a western, mixed with some heavy metal and even an air of science fiction mysteriousness and you have "Ouroboros". It is crushingly heavy, and agonizingly beautiful at the same time. This is sadly also the only song on the album where Cedric sounds even remotely interested in what he's singing. The way he delivers the final lines of the song ("
If the cell that holds me breaks me, it'll be hard to hold...") showcases his amazing pipes at their fullest potential.
But when you think about it, if you can manage three amazing albums in a row, it can be hard to follow those albums, and so it only seems natural that
Bedlam would disappoint. However, thankfully, just over a year later, the band managed to make up for this album with the beautiful and at times even creepy
Octahedron. If you are new to the Volta, don't start here. Start with Frances or De-Loused. If this is your first album of theirs, I ask of you, please don't let this album be an indicator of their overall output to you. They are capable of more than what is offered here, and their other 5 albums showcase some amazing soundscapes you won't be soon forgetting.
