The always odd duo that makes up The Mars Volta recently spoke to MTV about their upcoming album. Apparently, the band's new "concept" record is derived from lyrics and ideas given to the band by an archaic occult item not unlike a Ouija board. Cedric Bixler–Zavala explained:

We kind of stumbled across our own version of Captain Howdy.

[We] were being contacted by at least three people on the board that would come up as one person. We wrote down a lot of the messages they gave us, and we used it in the lyrics, and we also tried to fasten the lyrics into sort of like a good–luck charm, by putting positive elements into it.

Because such a strange impact was left by using the board, we decided to make a record based on … the stories we were getting from the things or spirits we were contacting

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The new record is titled The Bedlam In Goliath and is due out January 29, 2008. It is the follow–up to Amputechture which was released in 2006.