The Mars Volta The Bedlam In Goliath

"Maybe I'll break down," yowls Cedric Bixler-Zavala at the manic start of "Metatron", and album No. 4 finds The Mars Volta a generously oiled engine for sonic destruction. New drummer Thomas Pridgen brings his double-kick pummel, and bassist Juan Alderete repays him with raunchy rumble-and-slap, injecting '90s funk-metal into the band's punky prog. In the arena-worthy explosion of "Aberinkula”, the Rage Against the Machine-channelling buzzsaw guitar of "Goliath" and the Middle Eastern strings of the ouija-cowritten "Soothsayer", Bedlam is a hurtling triumph of controlled chaos.