Background On a trip in
Jerusalem, Rodriguez-Lopez purchased an archaic Ouija-type talking board at a curio shop as a gift for Bixler-Zavala. They would return to their tour bus after shows to play with it during their 2006 tour with the
Red Hot Chili Peppers, as it quickly became the band's post-show ritual. Dubbed "The Soothsayer", the board revealed stories, gave names and made demands, as the band was contacted by three different people who appeared in the form of one, who was then referred to as "Goliath". The more the band interacted with "The Soothsayer", otherworldly coincidences began plaguing the band's experience writing and recording
The Bedlam in Goliath. Blake Fleming, their drummer at the time, was let go from the band mid-tour; Bixler-Zavala wound up needing surgery performed on his foot due to the shoes he had been wearing, forcing him to relearn how to walk post-surgery; The engineer who quit stated to Rodriguez-Lopez: "I'm not going to help you make this record. 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." Rodriguez-Lopez was on the brink of starting the recording from scratch, but eventually kept on after recruiting
Robert Carranza as a replacement engineer, along with assistance from
Lars Stalfors and Isaiah Abolin. Midway through the recording sessions, Rodriguez-Lopez broke "The Soothsayer" in half and buried it in an undisclosed location as an attempt to undo the curse and halt the unforeseen tragedies. Rodriguez-Lopez swore never to give away the location of the burial, and also asked the band not to speak of it again during the remainder of the album's production. The song Soothsayer contains
field recordings that Omar recorded in Jerusalem. The recordings are a mixture from the
Jewish quarter, the
Muslim Quarter and the
Christian Quarter. Lyrics from Conjugal Burns are found in the
De-Loused in the Comatorium short story and were also performed by Bixler-Zavala years prior in live versions of Eriatarka.
Recording process Recorded and mixed at
Ocean Way Studios in
Hollywood and Rodriguez-Lopez's home studio in
Brooklyn,
New York, song material for
The Bedlam in Goliath dates back to April 2006 when demos were first written. Without a stable studio drummer after the three consecutive losses of
Jon Theodore,
Blake Fleming and
Deantoni Parks in a single year, the band was introduced to then 24-year-old
Thomas Pridgen, whose youthful presence—as described by Bixler-Zavala—had given The Mars Volta new life. Rodriguez-Lopez worked with
Rich Costey to finish the album in a three-week stretch, assisted by Shawn Michael Sullivan and Claudius Mittendorfer as editors. The string quintet on "Soothsayer" was recorded on Wednesday, June 6, 2007, at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco. Eventually the band decided in favor of "
Wax Simulacra" as the first single:
Themes Bixler-Zavala incorporated themes and names into the lyrics that were taken from messages given by "The Soothsayer". It also includes excerpts from poems that were found attached to the ouija, describing a love triangle between a woman, her daughter and a man in a Muslim society, along with an honor killing involving these people. Each song reinterprets the relationship in some shape or form, and as a good luck charm to counteract the cryptic themes, Bixler-Zavala incorporated elements of the
Afro-Caribbean religious tradition Santería into the lyrics as a "protective skin" to protect the band. The album ultimately serves as an attempt to artistically reverse their perceived bad luck by "setting traps" for the listeners to use as a way to undo what "The Soothsayer" had brought upon the band. To aid the concept, vinyl editions of the album contain the band's own version of the ouija inside the gatefold. ==Promotion==