maudlin of the Well - Bath (2001)^{Release ID: 1313}

So Maudlin of the Well have been on a fucking twelve-year hiatus, and don't even consider that MAYBE they're one of the most reputable names in the underground metal scene?  I've mentioned before that I wish there was more metal that would make use of jazz, like Unquestionable Presence by Athiest did, and one of the first things that comes to mind in this vein would be the Maudlin's album Bath, which starts with a chamber and jazz combo that lasts seven minutes before we get to the actual metal, and it's a gorgeous intro that builds up the Hitchcockian pressure of waiting for the metal to strike hard through its cool acoustic jazzy mood.  After the post-metal outro, we get a literal DEATH METAL song, and the group is quite adamant about emphasizing the genre this time.  But the thing is the contrast is a little too strong.

While the songs on this album will usually be between great to brilliant, this consistency thing is a bit of an issue throughout most of the album.  Although, there are some songs that bridge the softer side and the heavier side to help with the consistency, and thankfully the band plays with a lot of spirit and creativity.  I mean, some of these songs have this outlandish ability to turn weird sound effects, like water in a drain, into a thing of beauty and serenity with the right acoustic sand production to play with these effects.  And the fact that the band has such a strong sense of atmosphere means all of these songs have something very moody or serene about them.  Still, the inconcistency thing is an issue, and if it weren't for that this would be a five-star album.

So I've heard that this album is, in some ways, similarly inspired by Tiamat's Wildhoney, and I thought "Hey, I like Wildhoney! Maybe I'll just check out this song that got shared." (I'll tell you what song it is later on in the review) So I did, and it was true! It does sound like a brighter, more experimental Wildhoney. And when this album got recommended to me and a few other Infinite members, I knew I had to find out if there's any more Wildhoney to feed the metal Pooh Bear within me.

I gotta admit, Maudlin of the Well is indeed a band that is so incredibly unique. Their music is a lovable range from death metal to progressive rock to jazz fusion. Bath is one of the best experimental metal albums I've heard since Cynic's Focus! Too bad Maudlin has been inactive for almost a decade, so we gotta enjoy what they have.

The album starts with "The Blue Ghost/Shedding Qliphoth", one g****mn long calm overture. Seriously, this is an 8-minute album intro filled with mostly jazz! Then when it fades out, and right when metal purists are thinking of ejecting the CD and setting it on fire, at literally the last minute the heaviness explodes in loudness, causing those metal purists to reconsider their motive and listen to the rest of the album. And yes, that's the song I listened to believed when it's said that it sounds like Wildhoney. But if you thought you're gonna hear a beautiful album, let me tell you... "They Aren't All Beautiful"! This second track is the first actual song for fans of both death metal and jazz. First starting off as straightforward tech-death, then it transitions to a jazzy pace, then back to death metal. When Gojira at the time meets Cynic's Focus! The third song "Heaven and Weak" starts with a slightly weak slow intro, but gets more progressive and heavier before twisting into stronger aggression to f*** off that weak heaven. The fourth track is the "Interlude 1", the first interlude (not counting the long overture), filled with eerie synths over standout acoustic bass.

Next up is the infamous "The Ferryman". It starts with a organ dirge intro for 45 seconds, then fades into a slow second beginning part with soft cymbals and drums. Then the softness is cut off by a sudden progression to slow death-doom that speeds up to tech-death. Then there are some female vocals to give the song a similar vibe to mid-90s Therion. After that song ends, you hear something different; water being splashed around a bath tub! I guest that's the titular part of this album. It segues to "Marid's Gift of Art", where the water splashes fade out, making way for a nice acoustic melody and clean vocals. Soon, trumpet played by Jason Bitner (not to be confused with Shadows Fall drummer Jason Bittner), cello, and bass become audible. Now for my personal favorite, "Girl With a Watering Can", starting with clarinet, then more female singing and soothing guitar. Then the riffing gets heavier and the male singing comes in again. Then after a short soft break, it gets heavier with a killer guitar solo. F***ing amazing!

"Birth Pains of Astral Projection" is the over 10-minute epic of this album. It gets pretty weird throughout this song, especially in the riffs. After starting soft over 3 minutes, it switches to bad-a** death-ridden progressive metal to for any metalhead to enjoy. That's the last bit of death metal you would hear before the two soft end-songs. The next interlude "Interlude 2" has more splashing water with bass and piano beside an easy guitar riff. Final song "Geography" is also soft and slow, but with amazing clean singing.

I can tell you what an amazing album Bath is, but it's one of those masterpieces that you gotta hear to believe. Please, just buy this album, you won't regret spending your money! I plan on listening to Maudlin's other albums when possible, and maybe you can too, anytime including taking a bath. A once-in-a-lifetime avant-prog metal treasure!

Favorites: "The Blue Ghost/Shedding Qliphoth", "They Aren't All Beautiful", "The Ferryman", "Girl With a Watering Can", "Birth Pains of Astral Projection"

As any perennially curious metal-loving obsessive must do, I’ll occasionally come across a band that, regardless of their alignment with my particular taste or the level of enjoyment I may derive from their music, leave me utterly amazed at the scope & ambition they’ve displayed through their grandiose reenactment of their collective musical vision. Sometimes it can be due to the over-the-top complexity of an artist’s composition & arrangements. On other occasions it might have something to do with the strict adherence to arduous thematic guidelines that ultimately lead to a more complete portrayal of an artistic vision. Or it could simply be due to the sheer breadth of the musical palate that’s been drawn from or the quality of the production & musicianship required to pull everything off. But then, even more rarely, at intervals that generally span across several years, you’ll identify an artist who can achieve all of the above. An artist above artists. A creative trailblazer who has no notion of limiting their scope in the name of focus & accessibility. Boston-based avant-garde progressive metallers maudlin of the Well are one such artist.

I became aware of maudlin of the Well quite late compared to many fans. Their 1999 debut album dropped just as I was taking a well-earnt break from the metal scene & our paths wouldn’t cross until my brother Ben introduced me to them a decade later. The group were built around a core of multi-instrumentalist Toby Driver, keyboardist & percussionist Jason Byron & guitarist Greg Massi with a procession of additional musicians floating in & out at various stages. After forming in 1996, maudlin of the Well had released several demo tapes before being picked up by Dark Symphonies Records; a label run by Ted Tringo, the keyboardist from fellow Massachusetts neoclassical darkwave outfit Autumn Tears. From the look of the Dark Symphonies release list it would seem that the label was originally set up mainly so that Autumn Tears would have a place to release their own music with maudlin of the Well being the first outside project to receive a release. They’d also prove to be by far Dark Symphonies most prized signing to this day with the “My Fruit Psychobells… A Seed Combustible” album first putting the label on the map & the subsequent pair of sophomore releases becoming the label’s only genuine classics. It would be these highly revered 2001 records “Bath” & “Leaving Your Body Map” that would see me breaking my cherry with the band & it would prove to be an interesting experience to say the least.

The two records were always intended to be part of the one unified artistic vision & I’m not too sure why they weren’t initially released as a double album. All of the material is supposed to have been “written” whilst lucid dreaming & astral projecting…. well… to be fair the band have always stated that they simply accumulated pre-existing ideas from whatever alternate dimension they were astral projecting into & brought them back to reality where they expanded & elaborated on them. Sounds like complete bullshit to me. Particularly as I can easily pick up the influences for a lot of the material. I guess these theatricalities are all part of the over-arching artistic concept the band leaders had dreamt up; not only for their music but also their image & legacy. They clearly wanted to keep their audience intrigued & that can be seen very obviously in the way that the cover artwork for each album is essentially a visual representation of the other album’s title. Not to mention the self-perpetuated rumors of there being clues to a hidden secret that no one has ever been able to figure out in the liner notes. But if you ignore all the artsy bullshit, the thematic content is consistent across the two records & the material is known to be a combination of rearranged & re-orchestrated older material along with some newly-written custom-built works with all of the online evidence pointing to much of the musical inspiration coming from Tiamat’s classic 1994 album “Wildhoney”. This is interesting because there are definitely some moments that prove this to be true however these records offer so much more than that with an enormous amount of variety on display.

When preparing to review these two releases, the question of whether to do them separately or as one combined piece of work was something I pondered over for a day or so but ultimately opted to treat them as the unique releases that they are. The two albums may well be linked from a visionary & artistic sense however they each possess their own unique identity & there’s so much in each of them that I feel they deserve to be treated individually. So let’s start with “Bath”.

The cover artwork for “Bath” isn’t the most metal thing you’ll ever see & I think it’s a suitable representation of what you can expect to hear inside. It’s different, it’s interesting, it’s quirky & it doesn’t tie itself to any style of music in particular which is very true of maudlin of the Well’s music. I’m not too sure who produced these records but they’ve done a very good job it has to be said. The cleaner non-metal sounding material in particular sounds glistening & radiant while the more intense metal based tracks are possibly not quite as well represented. There’s certainly a lot of dynamic range on offer with plenty of mid-range frequencies in the mix which is a pleasant change from the overly compressed production jobs we’ve become used to in extreme metal. The depth of bass in the drums is lovely to hear & the clean guitar work & subtle use of keyboards are very professionally handled. The whole production very much in line with the expansive progressive rock & metal approach & I think this was generally suitable for a release this high on musicality & ambition.

Stylistically, “Bath” seems to be an outlet for all of Toby Driver’s wildest musical fantasies. I mean there are so many musical influences on display here that it’s a wonder that Toby was ever able to get his head around the sheer breadth of scope in this undertaking. It’s not just a case of having wildly varying content from track to track but within the tracks themselves. For example, “They Aren’t All Beautifull” kicks off sounding very much like Morbid Angel & Immolation before taking a drastic u-turn around the halfway mark & spending the remainder focusing on a quirky Mr.Bungle experimental rock style. “The Ferryman” starts off in the chunky doom death style of My Dying Bride before morphing into something akin the The 3rd & the Mortal & finally heading back to those strange Mr. Bungle vibes. “Girl With A Watering Can” continues with The 3rd & the Mortal’s female vocal led approach before hitting a Tool style alternative metal riff & culminating in a melodic metal crescendo similar to Katatonia. It’s a lot to take in but the transitions are very rarely jarring. In fact, it’s pretty amazing as to just how smoothly the arrangements change & morph when you consider how vast the musical scope is on some of these pieces. And that’s just the metal-based pieces. The cleaner material actually makes up more of the album than the heavier material does & if anything it’s more impressive. You’ll find traces of many disparate subgenres like avant-prog, art rock, psychedelic rock, jazz fusion, folk music & indie rock scattered across the tracklisting with all being beautifully composed & executed. “Birth Pains Of Astral Projection” even kicks off in the style of “Twin Peaks” while “Marid’s Gift Of Art” is quite reminiscent of Bjork’s artsy chamber pop efforts only with a slightly more neoclassical feel. If I’m honest, the pieces that have the most significant impact on me are generally some of those cleaner efforts like the gorgeously ambient Tiamat-inspired opener “The Blue Ghost/Shedding Qliphoth”, the relaxing “Interlude 1” or the pretty closer “Geography” that reminds me of Anathema & Tiamat’s gentler works.

The instrumental performances are astounding given just how broad the musical palate is. These musicians traverse such a wide variety of sonic landscapes however they very rarely seem out of their depth. For the sake of attributing a label to maudlin of the Well’s sound, I’d suggest that it sits most comfortably in the middle ground between progressive metal & avant-garde metal. A few of the more significant pieces like “They Aren’t All Beautifull”, “The Ferryman” & “Birth Pains Of Astral Projection” definitely fall into avant-garde territory with some very weird sounding moments to be enjoyed. In fact, I’d suggest that I find motW’s more psychedelic material to be the weaker parts of the album as they can be a little grating. But not all of “Bath”s tracklisting is avant-garde. Expansive & ambitious? Yes. But not necessarily avant-garde. There’s a lot of material here that falls more into the realms of progressive art rock & takes the form of either a more complex version of traditional sounds or a dramatic musical departure from the usual directions of rock & metal musicians. The album also leaves me with the impression of being quite symphonic & orchestral in its construction. It’s sometimes even chamber-ish in its instrumentation but there’s a dreamy atmosphere to most of the tracklisting that allows you to sink into the lush soundscapes in between the more aggressive death metal backbone. The guitar solos are of particular interest to me thanks to a refreshing jazz fusion approach that delivers such interesting note selection & phrasing for a metal-based release. In fact, I’d suggest that the lead guitar work may be my favourite element of the album.

But not only is “Bath” a diverse offering from an instrumental point of view. It’s also pretty diverse from a vocal one with four different vocal styles employed throughout. There’s a traditional death metal grunt, there’s a screaming metalcore style delivery, there’s a cruisy & clean indie rock vocal & there’s a beautiful higher register female voice. Personally, the vocals are probably one of the areas that limits me from your higher ratings to be honest. As much as Jason Byron’s death metal growls are pretty standard for death metal, they do seem a bit out of place over some of the music they’re layered over & subsequently seem a little bit cheap. I actually think the album would have been better off with a completely clean vocal approach to be honest. And then Toby Driver’s indie rock vocals take me a llllloooonnnnggg way out of my comfort zone. They remind me quite a lot of artists like Ben Lee or Dinosaur Jr in that they don’t place a great emphasis on staying in key. They’re also a little short on masculinity for your average red-blooded metal audience but somehow they work & I’ve found myself enjoying them more & more over time. The female vocal performance of Maria-Stella Fountoulakis is always a welcome inclusion though & I’m continually reminded of the voice of Kari Rueslatten from The 3rd & The Mortal whenever she enters the fold.

At the end of the day, “Bath” is a wonderful expression of art in general & it offers deep insights into the wide array of influences of the various artists. Could there possibly be TOO many disparate influences combined here to really maximize the impact of each individual element? Quite possibly. I mean I do often find myself wishing they’d explored a particular sound a little more than the brief dalliances we’ve been provided with so that’s a strong indicator that this may be the case. It does make every track so distinct though as they all possess their very own special characteristics & qualities. “Bath” is a wonderful album that perhaps just takes me a little too far outside of comfort zone to command classic status.

For fans of: Kayo Dot, Thy Catafalque, In The Woods…