The official back story for the Mars Volta’s latest effort, The Bedlam in Goliath, involves a cursed Ouija board that guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez bought in Jerusalem as a gift for singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala. The two became slightly obsessed with “The Soothsayer” during the Amputechture tour and channeled all kinds of different phrases and stories that astute listeners will find scattered throughout the new album. At the same time they ended up making contact with an angry demon they dubbed Goliath, who proceeded to inflict all kinds of bad luck on their creative lives — such as ongoing drummer complications, a near-crippling freak foot injury for Bixler-Zavala and the mental collapse of Bedlam’s engineer followed by mysterious technical problems and natural disasters that would plague the rest of the recording session, nearly driving Rodriguez-Lopez to abandon the entire project. EYE WEEKLY spoke with Bixler-Zavala about The Mars Volta’s knack for turning bad situations into prog inspirations.

Your first gig in quite a while was New Year’s Eve [at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco], what was the audience’s reception to the new material?

I guess when you don’t play a lot of material that people know they just kind of look at you a little dumfounded. So there were a lot of looks like that, and also because it’s such a big place and everything we throw at people is so much information overload that maybe wasn’t the best place to do it. But that’s the way we do things.

But the rest of the shows you’re playing in the next little while are all pretty small,
And are you looking forward to introducing the music that way, instead of a big venue?

I’m just looking forward to being able to touch people, because I really can’t stand barricades. It’s more of a challenge to have someone who can actually touch your ankles or who can sweat on you as much as you sweat on them, you know. When there’s such a big stage and a big barricade and all that noise it’s a little impersonal and it’s a lot easier, at least for me, to like turn off and pretend like there’s no one there because it doesn’t look like anyone’s there.
    
Bedlam in Goliath seems to have a more sustained intensity to it than the past two records. Was that a conscious decision to have a lot less clean and meditative passages?

I guess it was just us trying to not repeat ourselves. I mean there’s a lot of moments where we do repeat ourselves, but we’re just trying to make it fresh and make it interesting. And then also the fact that we were dormant for so long because of all of our drummer problems just kind of grew in to sort of this animosity and nervous energy and we had to release it somewhere. And then our new drummer came into the picture and he’s kind of like the equivalent of all that pent up frustration of having to take a year of two off because of our drummer problems and all of the other bad luck that struck us.

And how has the addition of drummer Thomas [Pridgen] affected the music, other than reflecting that pent-up energy?

Well, I guess if you compared it to church, he’s the kind of pastor who always has a really good outlook. Our last drummer was kind of a grumpy pastor, so it kind of affected the show all the time. Since we have a new pastor who has a really great, like, young person energy and doesn’t come from punk rock, who comes from gospel and R&B and just has a great disposition to life in general, it’s made the band start smiling on stage. He’s given us a second life.

[Pridgen] has never heard of the Bad Brains and yet I swear he’s the illegitimate child of all the people in the Bad Brains. But it’s refreshing because he doesn’t come from that. He doesn’t come from indie rock at all. Indie rock always has this way of thinking where you’re gonna second guess all your moves and not be confident and worry about what other think.

In terms of making the record and creating songs in general, when Omar brings the music in and you first hear it, what is your response?

Well, usually my first response is what he keeps. I just do tracks of gibberish. It almost sounds like speaking in tongues — which a lot of times most rock music just sounds like that. Over the years I’ve just embraced the fact that unless you’re someone like Dylan, and lyric is important with someone like that, it’s more about the intention of the feeling of the sound that came out of your mouth rather than the intellectualized meaning behind it. Which is great for everyone who wants to study and stuff like that, but I’m always into the moment of now.

Now in terms of the circumstances of the record, you seem to produce fantastic works of art under fairly tragic conditions. Do you thrive on tragedy and conflict, or are you just able to deal with it and work around it?

I don't thrive on it because I don’t like conflict and trauma, it’s not fun. But if there’s anything, I know how to channel it in a positive way, and at least if something bad happens in anybody in the band’s life, I just know that we’ll be able to do our version of the blues without sounding like guys ripping off the blues. I just know that we have an outlet to channel that stuff, where it’s harder to just be human for me and express any kind of guilt or remorse or sadness. It’s better for me to just take on the personality of somebody else on stage and just do it there.

In the midst of everything that was going on during the making of Bedlam, how did you cope with it?

Well, in the same way we cope with everything with this band — which is lots of people always telling us “no”. And when I say that, even coming from our last band there was always lots of people, whether it be label people or management people or people in the band who would use the term no, and who would use the term no when dealing with being creative. So we just see the term “no” as this obstacle or set of obstacles that are fun to tread over. We just can’t stand it when people say no to us really, like “No don’t use that pedal it sounds too cartoonish” or “No, you need an opening act when you tour” or just “no” in general. To say “no” to anyone who just thinks they’re an artist, you know, it’s murder.

To return to the full article, click here.