-Best Album of 08'

It’s never a triumphant return for The Mars Volta. Always coming off the heels of a fresh record, or year long tour, The Mars Volta seem to rarely bat a broken eye lid for sleep. Since their noisy release of the Tremulant E.P. in 2002 TMV has gathered an insatiable army of fans. Being as prolific as they have been, it would be a shame if there was any less of a following: Since 2002 they have released four full length LP’s, and a live album with another full-length in pre-production. This year was marked with their latest release titled The Bedlam in Goliath. With the departure of drummer John Theodore in 2007, (now making music with Zach De La Rocha in One Day as a Lion) TMV picked up Thomas Pridgen, never missed a beat, and recorded and released Bedlam a few months later. Pridgen’s hard hitting beats added a new punch that strangely never seemed to be missing from TMV’s sound. Perhaps there was nothing ever missing, and the new music just demanded the bombast of Pridgens, whatever the case is, it’s impossible to ignore him despite the sonic hellfire produced by the other eight members. Bedlam denotes a break away from reverb-drowned world of De-Loused and Frances, and heads into the dark world promised by Amputecture.

The origins of this album leave none of its workings to mystery. It all started with the Omar Rodriguez’s (Lead guitarist, song writer) trip the Israel. Always being the thoughtful band mate, decided on buying a Oujia-like talking board for Cedric. (the Vocalist) It soon became a post-show tradition to “communicate” with the board and its “guests.” They named it “The Soothsayer” and they also named its three-part spirit “Goliath.” It made demands, and asked questions and seemed to be quite moody. Soon after speaking with their tour-bus housegeist, things began to go awry. Among the supernatural coincidences were: their former drummer Blake Flemming leaving the band due to sudden financial troubles, Cedric’s foot needing surgery and walking therapy, audio tracks for the album disappearing randomly off computer screens, Omar’s home studio getting flooded causing power outages, as well as a sound engineer going mad while working on the mix. In a statement to Omar the former sound engineer waxed hysterical: "I'm not going to help you make this record. You're trying to do something very bad with this record, you're trying to make me crazy and you're trying to make people crazy.” It’s times like these that make me want to believe in things like ghosts, and souls. To add to the dramatic sequence of events Omar decided on breaking the board in half and burying it in an undisclosed location.

Despite the silly superstitions, the music itself is infused with an undeniable spiritual feeling. But this has always been the craft of this band. Omar’s compositions and Cedric’s unwieldy voice have always haunted me. Unlike their previous efforts the songs are not following a chronology or blanket theme. They are telling stories, but contrasting again with earlier works, their borders stretch only to the edges of their track listing numbers. It is an album made of twisting stories, unwitting hope, and contradictory as well as non-existent conclusions. It is sprinkled with poetry, with daring, with avant-garde sophistication, cleverly recycled aesthetics, and syntax here and there for cohesion.

Bedlam jumps right into a highly energetic track called Abernikula, a name given sometimes to the Bata Drum (a drum used for spiritual rites in Yoruba, Nigeria and imported from there in Santeria practices in the Caribbean. The band has admitted that this is their most aggressive musical effort yet, and it seems undeniable after hearing the doom-impending guitar riffs in the opening track. From there we crash into the Socratic track Metatron, with an off-beat driving punk beat layered with a nervous meandering guitar riff. After that the album opens up into new emotional avenues with a track with rare pop sensibility. The song Ilyena is a nod to the character Ilyena Therin Moerelle from the fictional works of Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time fantasy series.) Their single chases away the apparition of Illyena quickly and as soon as you get caught in the heavy 6/8 groove you’re bombarded with an odd meter chorus. It’s the shortest Volta song on record clocking in at 2:39.

The ending half of the album contains its greatest musical and existential strengths. With songs like “Ouroborous,” “Cavalettas,” and “Conjugal Burns.” My favorite track on the album however has to be “Soothsayer.” Soothsayer begins with a hum of violins playing Arabic scale progressions, and the distant funk musings of Omar transmutated by his endless pedal board. In the immediate foreground of this mellow track is a recording of a marketplace gathering in the Muslim quarter of Palestine. This track features sounds from the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian epicenters of Palestine, scattered in different parts of the piece. It is their most “international” sound to date, and that’s what I really love about this album, best of 08’.



Other albums of honorable mention:


-Misanthropy Pure (Shai Hulud)

-Graduation (Kanye West)

-Traced in Air (Cynic)