The Mars Volta Review
Title: An Acquired Taste
Album: The Bedlam in Goliath
Artist: The Mars Volta
Universal Records 2008
Produced by Omar Rodriguez Lopez
Track Listing:
Aberinkula
Metatron
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The Mars Volta Review
Title: An Acquired Taste
Album: The Bedlam in Goliath
Artist: The Mars Volta
Universal Records 2008
Produced by Omar Rodriguez Lopez
Track Listing:
Aberinkula
Metatron
Ilyena
Wax Simulacra
Goliath
Tourniquet Man
Cavalettas
Agadez
Askepios
Ouroborious
Soothsayer
Conjugal Burns
Do not enter The Mars Volta lightly. It's not the kind of music - a term used rather loosely - you can simply have on in the background. It's about as subtle a sledgehammer.
Most bands produce riffs and hooks that are easily accessible to the masses, music that lends itself to pattern and repetition and a certain level of aural comfort. This, is not The Mars Volta.
A Mars Volta album is like travelling to a foreign nation; a lot will go on, you'll enjoy most of it yet you'll understand very little. They produce albums meant to be listened to in their entirety. Describing a Mars Volta “track” is like describing a single piece of pasta in a macaroni and cheese dinner. Their music simply cannot be separated and taken as individual parts in a bigger plan. The only separation that exists here is the one from album to album.
Each Mars Volta CD tells a story and, judging from the album art and the lyrics, this one roughly has something to with sub-Saharan Africa, a crucified Jesus and split grapefruits. The best part of Mars Volta albums is they have both huge meaning and none. You can make it into anything you like and it all seems to make sense. This isn't meant as a critique, more a primer into the beauty and frustration of listening to The Mars Volta. They are what happens when a jazz sensibility meets a lot of guys with guitars.
As a band they are a loose collective of fifteen or so members (Red Hot Chilli Peppers' John Frusciante has been a transient member in the past) that intertwine into this wonderfully weird meshing of controlled and subjective noise. It's not that there isn't talent here, it's just that they are literally devoid of structure. Those looking for choruses and verses and bridges should look elsewhere. This is prog rock in the Tool vein.
To decide for yourself if you're potential Mars Volta material, grab the album, throw on track five (Goliath) and give it a whirl. If you like the appetizer, immerse yourself into the whole meal, start from the beginning and resist the urge to press Stop when it starts to get heavy, brooding or just plain odd.
As albums go, truthfully this is no De-loused in the Comatorium. That 2003 CD brought them the most critical acclaim and mainstream success and it was also the closest the band has band been to being catalogued into a genre. Truth is, they never will. They are music without traditional borders, music in its freest form. They're simply not quantifiable. And I'm thinking that's exactly the way they like it.
© Charlie Teljeur 2008
