‘The Bedlam in Goliath’: the Mars Volta album written by a cursed Ouija board
Inspiration for an album can come from anywhere: a newfound passion for life, the end of a romantic relationship, or longstanding political turmoil. For some, a new album might find its roots in the spiritual and the mystical, and for the progressive rock band the Mars Volta, a cursed Ouija board seemed to be directing their efforts to write and record what would become the 2008 album The Bedlam in Goliath.
The story goes like this…guitarist and songwriter Omar Rodriguez-Lopez was on a trip through Jerusalem when he stumbled upon an old Ouija board at an antique shop. Thinking it would make for a good present for his bandmate vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala, he purchased it without a second thought.
When the Mars Volta were touring with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2006, the band headed back to their tour bus, where they would play with the Ouija board, an event that quickly became something of a post-concert ritual. The band affectionately gave the board the name ‘The Soothsayer’.
The board was said to tell stories all of its own making as well as reveal names of characters to the band and make requests of them. Three spirit characters appeared to the band, all under the guise of a single entity, which they soon called ‘Goliath’.
As time went on with the band using ‘The Soothsayer’ more and more, strange occurrences began to happen, particularly around the time they started to write and record what would become the fourth Mars Volta album, The Bedlam in Goliath.
For starters, drummer Blake Flemming suddenly quit the group, citing financial difficulties. Then Bixler-Zavala required an operation on his foot after his shoes had begun causing him severe pain. He then needed to learn to walk again.
In terms of the actual recorded process, files consistently went missing from hard drives, and the home studio of Rodriguez-Lopez was mysteriously flooded. It was all beginning to sound like a Biblical horror story. Shortly after the flood, an engineer for the new album quit, telling 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.”
Clearly, the Ouija board had rubbed some people up the wrong way and was causing malevolence and distress among the Mars Volta and their team. After finding a new engineer, Rodriguez grabbed ‘The Soothsayer’ and broke it in half. He took the broken pieces and buried them in a remote location, hoping to break whatever curse it had cast on the band. He asked the band never to talk of the board during the recording process and vowed never to reveal its location.
What ‘The Soothsayer’ had told the Mars Volta over the previous month, though, worked its way onto several of the songs on the resultant The Bedlam of Goliath album. Also featured were snippets of poems that came with the board when Rodriguez-Lopez bought it in Jerusalem, in which a three-way relationship between a mother, father and daughter is described, and each song provides a unique take on the relationship.
The Mars Volta hoped that The Bedlam of Goliath would free them from ‘The Soothsayers’ curse. It’s said that there are “traps” for listeners in the songs on the album, laid so as to reverse the fortunes of the band. To spook listeners even further, the vinyl edition of the album contains a copy of the curse Ouija board. However, it remains to be seen whether the curse was lifted or if it still haunts the band and their fans to this day.
