Rock concept albums, as a general rule of thumb, are rarely written around easily digestible, sensible story lines. Simple little narratives like boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl or even boy-kills-girl are easy enough to tackle in a 3 minute pop, blues or country song, leaving concept albums as the format of choice for exploring bigger themes, like the existential crisis of a deaf-mute pinball wizard or, in the case of the Mars Voltas The Bedlam in Goliath, how to shake the nagging curse of a demon-possessed ouija board picked up at a Jerusalem curio shop. Stranger albums than Goliath may have debuted as high as No. 3 on the Billboard 200 before, but its doubtful; its also doubtful that any other band in contemporary rock would even have the wherewithal to record such an album in the first place, let alone the sonic fury and imagination to pull it off. But thats exactly what fans of this Los Angeles-based band have come to expect from group founders Cedric Bixler-Zavala (vocals) and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (guitar) ever since Mars Voltas explosive rise from the ashes of El Paso, Texas late, great At the Drive-In at the turn of the century. Simply put, from 2001s Tremulant EP to 2003s De-Loused in the Comatorium to 2005s Frances the Mute to 2006s Amputechture, the Mars Volta has never been a band for the faint of heart. Or the thesaurus-impaired.