Unlike my mysterious ignorance of Amputechture, I know exactly why I ignored The Bedlam In Goliath. 

By the time this record came out, my tastes had shifted significantly. My musical diet was still peppered with similarly experimental acts that I obsessed over at the same time I discovered De-Loused, like Radiohead and Sigur Rós. But for the most part, my tastes were far simpler: I was devouring acts like Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Phosphorescent, and whatever else La Blogotheque and The Black Cab Sessions were featuring.

I had come to desire simplicity. Even as a musician, I had “matured” past the progressive post-hardcore of my high school band and honed my craft as a solo singer-songwriter. I might have still appreciated the first couple Mars Volta records, but I wasn’t returning to them often.

So when Bedlam was released, I had little patience for their maximalist prog, their meandering jam sessions, or the claims of a cursed Ouija board tormenting them—however, I did largely agree with the original engineer who quit the project saying, “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.”

But now that I’ve gotten older—and made peace with my previous selves—I’ve come to realize just how wrong I was about this record. Is it a bloated, self-indulgent behemoth that is often a taxing listen? Probably, but all of the criticisms leveled against it can be directed towards the albums that I love either, so…

The story behind the album often overshadows the music: while on a trip to Jerusalem, Omar Rodriguez-López bought a talking board for Cedric Bixler. They named it The Soothsayer and played with it on their tour bus after shows. But strange things started happening: band members quit mid-tour, Bixler required surgery on his feet and had to learn how to walk again, recordings would disappear from hard drives, Omar’s home studio flooded, and the original engineer suffered a nervous breakdown. Determined to break the curse and finish the album, Omar broke The Soothsayer into two places and buried them in separate locations, which he refused to divulge to anyone else.

You would think that a background like that would lead to the craziest album The Mars Volta had ever put to tape. And you’d be right: The Bedlam In Goliath stops for breath the least often of any of their albums. “Abernikula” opens the record with an explosion of manic energy, and it rarely slows down. “Metatron” doesn’t wait for the track before to end before bursting in with eight minutes of prog maximalist fury. Bixler’s voice stays near the top of his range for most of the album while the drums maintain an almost constant fill. Organs and horns blare in the background, ensuring that there isn’t a single bit of sonic real estate that isn’t flooded with sound.

Which isn’t to say the entire album is a barrage of virtuosic solos and choruses that no one but Cedric Bixler can sing. Some moments are properly catchy: “Ilyena,” named after the birth name of Dame Helen Mirren, has an irresistible groove and a proper hook. “Wax Simulacra” doesn’t even break the three-minute mark, offering up one of the only tight singles in their catalog. “Ouroborous” is maybe the most dynamically varied track on the disc, and even has a few moments that are earnestly beautiful. “Soothsayer” brings down the tempo, using field recordings and offering up one of the most epic tracks the group has ever released. Even the ten-minute “Goliath” is centered around a riff and chorus that wouldn’t be out of place on a Led Zepplin record—though with far less Latin influence.

In all, The Bedlam In Goliath is certainly the most indulgent, ambitious, obtuse, and challenging entry in the band’s discography. But The Mars Volta has always been indulgent, ambitious, obtuse, and challenging. It might lack the immediacy of De-Loused in the Comatorium or the dynamics of Frances the Mute, but it might be the most Mars Volta-y album the band has ever put out. It finds the project at their least restrained, cranking the knob on their idiosyncracies so hard it falls off. And that makes The Bedlam in the Goliath a far better album than I had given it credit for—even if the vinyl bonus disc track “Mr. Muggs” is completely unlistenable.