Omar Rodriguez Lopez: The Essential Album Guide

THE BEDLAM IN GOLIATH (2008)
Key Tracks: "Wax Simulacra," "Ouroboros"
Quick Take: On the Mars Volta's fourth record, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez work furiously to achieve prog-rock transgression: compressing dissected time signatures and stammering riffs into seizures that sound like three Mars Voltas going off at once, splashed with the non-sequitur gore of Bixler-Zavala's singing in tongues (inspired this time, the band swears, by lethal spirits conjured on a Ouija board Rodriguez Lopez found in Jerusalem). Parts of Bedlam seem indistinguishable from the frenzy on Frances the Mute, and it gets precariously close to nonsense. At one point in "Metatron," Bixler-Zavala appears to be in a different key and headspace from the rest of the Volta. But there is a great leap in the songwriting — closer to classic hard-rock force and melodic drama — that, in "Goliath," "Cavaletta" and the Holy City atmospheres of "Soothsayer," is even more jolting than the weirdness.

The Bedlam in Goliath (Universal)