Received wisdom has it that to toy with the occult is to enter into a Faustian pact that will bite you on the ass somewhere down the line. Magic, myth and sorcery had been recurrent themes within The Mars Volta’s output for some time and served as the dominant motifs for their previous full length, Amputechture.

So it was almost inevitable that, at some point, luck, kismet, karma, serendipity whatever you want to call the metaphysical forces that exert hidden influence upon our mortal world would visit the group and enact some kind of payback. Whatever debts the group had accrued came due with The Bedlam In Goliath, the group’s fourth full length, and an album whose creation was, in every sense of the word, cursed. The production of the album was regularly scuppered by technical problems that erased whole takes from their computer hard drives, a phenomenon Omar’s in studio right hand man Rich Costey an experienced producer/engineer in his own right found impossible to explain.

Label
ADA / Warner
Genre
Alternative LP - SIDE A
Aberinkula
Metatron
Ilyena
LP - SIDE B
Wax Simulacra
Goliath
Tourniquet Man
Cavalettas
LP - SIDE C
Agadez
Askepios
Ouroborous
LP - SIDE D
Soothsayer
Conjugal Burns
LP - SIDE E
Mr. Muggs
LP - SIDE F
Mr. Muggs

WARNER