Mars Volta on the making of 'Bedlam'

Making new album put The Mars Volta to the test
By JASON MacNEIL -- Special to Sun Media

In making its new album The Bedlam In Goliath, The Mars Volta probably thought it was embodying the character of David given the series of strange, eerie events stacked against the band.

Although The Mars Volta plays tonight at the Phoenix Concert Theatre, the story of the album's ordeal basically began when guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez purchased an Ouija board in Israel. Following that, some unexplainable events began taking place.

But after burying the board, things took a turn for the worse.

"After recording the rhythm section everything started to fall apart," he says from New York City. "My engineer was having a mental breakdown, a man who I worked alongside for four years and made over 20 records with. Hearing him saying these really crazy things to me and trying to burn all my material, I think that was the beginning of all the true chaos of the record."

What followed was more weirdness, with tracks mysteriously disappearing and the guitarist's studio flooding. The setbacks, however, made Rodriguez-Lopez that much more determined to complete The Bedlam In Goliath, set for release on Jan. 29.

RAW ANIMALS

"I was like a primate, I was like a person in the jungle eating raw animals," he says. "It was just survival. The only thing that mattered was finishing it. Nothing else mattered, getting sleep or eating right didn't matter. It was just a matter of finishing the record so the record could be out of my head and out of my life."

At 12 songs and roughly 75 minutes, The Bedlam In Goliath is anything but slick, pre-packaged, cookie-cutter rock and roll. With jazz flourishes, sporadic swampy soul grooves and spacey, psychedelic riffs, it's definitely an adventure.

"The album just starts and it goes and it goes until it's over and there's not much time in between," Rodriguez-Lopez says. "It's completely claustrophobic. The album has several twists and turns with the down-tempo and the up-tempo and just the sheer intensity or aggressiveness of it."

Of the dozen tracks, the guitarist says Ilyena was the hardest to finish. The song, whose title is inspired by British actress Helen Mirren's birthname Ilyena Mironov, relies on a loop which musically isn't the smoothest.

"The song itself is in what is usually referred to as G minor, but there certain notes in the track which weren't part of the chord structure," he says. "That was a very difficult song to put together even though it doesn't sound like it."

The Mars Volta has also been revitalized by adding drummer Thomas Pridgen, a musician held in high esteem by Rodriguez-Lopez.

"Thomas has brought a ray of light and hope and fun, young energy," he says. "It sounds like I'm talking about a woman because that's the type of connection you have when you make music with someone. He really loves being there and loves what he's doing."

The guitarist says the shows so far have been great, with the problems of creating the record something that he laughs about now. In fact, a fan created an online video game called Goliath: The Soothsayer based on the studio experiences.

"Had he asked right after we had finished the record I definitely would've said no," Rodriguez-Lopez says. "I felt too close to the experience and too shook up by it. But like most tragedies once you've learned to deal with them you find your laughter and you're able to laugh at the tragedies."