maudlin of the Well - My Fruit Psychobells... A Seed Combustible (1999)^{Release ID: 1312}

You really don’t know what you’re gonna get going into an album titled like that. And perhaps the last thing you’d expect is a doomy, gloomy descent into the bizarro oceans of the well. My Fruit Psychobells manages to subvert expectations in many ways, and at times this is a positive and others a negative.

Firstly, I have to praise the creativity and atmosphere here. The doomy sections are easily the best, morose chords and broken leads play over discordant layers of other instrumentation, which varies wildly from section to section. Surreal, aquatic lyricism paints pictures of drowning in hopeless oceans while still reaching out for some bright, warm thing. When everything hits right, it’s immaculate.

The problem here is that most of the time, things aren’t always hitting just right. The Death Metal, Post Rock, Jazz, and whatever-else influences all make for an interesting listen, but at times, they are at odds with serving the song or atmosphere. More often than not, a song will spend a few minutes building a sense of mood, only to break into a totally inconsistent style that offsets (and too often ruins) the established mood. Sometimes the changes in style are fun and interesting, but other times they feel pointless, like quirkiness for the sake of quirkiness.

If the band managed to change styles while RETAINING the mood, that would be fantastic. As it is, this album is full of incredible moments surrounded by pieces that sometimes do and sometimes don’t fit together. Still a unique and impressive undertaking, but it can be improved.

When I first came across Maudlin of the Well, I thought it was a bit silly at first because of its name, its cover arts, and massive experimentation, but after listening to and reviewing one of their albums Bath, I now realize how creative and unique this band is! Their debut My Fruit Psychobells... A Seed Combustible was released during the rising scene of different progressive metal bands/artists like Devin Townsend. This album has male/female clean/growling vocals, the usual guitars, bass, keyboards, and drums, plus clarinet and trumpet. Production is a bit bad, but it adds nostalgic feeling and eccentric atmosphere, though it doesn't help the growling vocals which are still sparse.

You might initially think the album doesn't sound too different and instead sounds like something you've heard throughout your lifetime. That's what I thought when I first heard this album. It's like I've heard each genre element from a different place. Weird, isn't it? Having the band's full discography for 5 months now, I knew it would be a good time to listen to this album again, and it is almost a classic! Now I feel up to writing a review for their remaining metal album Leaving Your Body Map after this one.

"Ferocious Weights" is a strange song title because the song isn't so ferocious, being mostly calm especially in its eerie intro. Soon the rest of the instrumentation comes in with the addition of trumpets and eventually nice smooth female vocals. Then comes the clean male vocals, and soon the song switches to crazy fast extreme metal soloing before returning to the calmness with good female vocals and unique clean guitar before ending the song on a heavy note. This would probably be my favorite song if not for something much more majestic to come much later. "A Conception Pathetic" is definitely ferocious starting with death metal and psycho growling switching back and forth with unforgettable clean guitar. Then it ends with a haunting carnival-like melody. "Undine and Underwater Flowers" starts with slow melody and soft male singing going up to falsetto. When the full instrumentation goes on, it's not totally heavy but still strange, painting an otherworldly landscape of two alien lovers gathering underwater flowers. This is almost progressive stoner rock! I swear I don't do drugs.

"The Ocean, the Kingdom, and the Temptation" once again starts with calm atmosphere before having more growling heaviness. You can call that song an 11-minute epic, but those last 3 minutes is just ambient experimentation. Still an awesome epic though! "Pondering a Wall" starts heavy, but not death-metal heavy until the two-minute mark. Then 30 seconds later, it gets slightly softer. And right in the middle of the song, it reaches it soft point with female vocals before going slightly heavier again.

Then comes my favorite of the album, "Catharsis of Sea Sleep and Dreaming Shrines". There's some amazing clean guitar here, and the growling, I kid you not, sounds calm! As for the rest of the music, it's so hard and weird to explain, you just have to listen to it. After all that heavy chaos, "Blight of River Systems" is just laid-back jazzy prog rock song, but the second half contains a great duet and solo. My 3rd favorite behind "Ferocious Weights" and "Catharsis..."! However, the two-minute "Outro" is just pointless whispering, that's why I gave this 4.5 stars instead of 5. A couple reissues include two bonus tracks that are old demos; "Beauty" and "The Crystal Margin".

If you like progressive/avant-garde metal with astral trumpets, you're definitely in the right place with My Fruit Psychobells... A Seed Combustible! Though due to a bit of heaviness and experimentation, this might not be for everyone....

Favorites: "Ferocious Weights", "The Ocean, the Kingdom, and the Temptation", "Catharsis of Sea Sleep and Dreaming Shrines", "Blight of River Systems"