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“Maudlin Of The Well have the ability to put something in their music that you will never find anywhere else: the grotesque”
From “Encyclopedia of Bands with Strange Names” by Fulvio Romiti.
“Maudlin Of The Well paint their sonic universe with the distorted colors of a world soft as a Dalí watch”
From “Painting and music, a often lethal combination” by Fulvio Romiti.
“Maudlin Of The Well compose acid fairy tales and comic tragedies, terrifying love stories, and entertaining horrors of the human being”
From “Combine adjectives with words of opposite meaning” by Fulvio Romiti.
Well, after this terrible introduction that is at least cloying even to me while I should be here rolling with laughter, we can introduce the only Maudlin not yet reviewed on DeBaser.
Kidding aside and the biases of the review's start, the object, the simulacrum that could best represent this album and more generally the music of this American ensemble is a plaster gnome (a fair tribute to our little gnomes). The plaster gnome is ultimately useless. But its very existence can only convey a sense of disorientation, it is terribly grotesque to have a plaster gnome, have you ever thought of that? I imagine so. It looks at us slyly from the low of its height, often smiles, why should it smile? Maybe it knows some mystery of which we foolish humans can only grasp the outlines without being able to define it (BUM).
The same goes for Maudlin Of The Well and especially for this Leaving Your Body Map where the grotesque reigns. First of all, the voluntarily ridiculous brutal-death parts of the twin Bath almost entirely disappear. The first track Stones Of October’s Sobbing opens similarly to the delayy The Blue Ghost/Shedding Qliphot of Bath, also the first track of the respective CD, a good sign. After about a minute and a half, however, a delirious doom phrasing begins, (clean) guitars extremely heavy, slow, cumbersome as a herd of elephants, all accompanied by a delirious trumpet that after less than a minute accompanies a new evolution, it should be an extremely sad song yet the melodies are sunny and cheerful, as if it were black metal in a major key (ndw it is not black metal relax).
This is where the grotesque, the mystery lies, a landscape could be a sunny summer day where the sun beats on a stream of still and muddy water or above a fresh concrete flow. It is followed closely by Gleam In Ranks perhaps the least sick episode of the whole album but equally wonderful. Then comes the nearly 10 minutes of Bizzare Flowers/A Violent Mist, intro complete with bells, soft delicate voice, measured with a spoon, true relaxation only to explode into the joyously gloomy chaos of the rest of the track to delight us with a beautiful very fusion-like ending. The fourth track, on the other hand, is a wonderful 4-minute acoustic interlude with guitars that waste in natural harmonics and some bongos that make their appearance towards the end along with the violin and wind section (the entry of the clarinet is orgasmic) of MOW. The fifth The Curve That to An Angle Turn'd is surely the romantic one despite the initial appearances of the entire maudlin plot. The sixth and my favorite Sleep Is A Curse is a beautiful melancholic ballad, but as always sadness is forced to pass through particularly melodic and sunny keys (=open tunings, as clear as the sun), with only acoustic guitar and voice.
I finish the track-by-track description with the monstrous Riseth He The Numberless part 1 the most death-like of the whole record where the same continuous up-and-down of the wonderful Ferocious Weights from the debut album My Fruit...bla bla bla reappears more or less.
The rest of the album is insanely sunny like the previous songs so I avoid continuing.
In some interviews, MOW have stated that they wanted to do something that no one had ever tried to do. I would say that for another twenty years a similar triad of records will be impossible to see, let's enjoy it now that we can.
Opium/hallucinogens combined with true artistic genius 3-Music 0.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Gleam in Ranks (04:16)
A walk to Heaven isn't any better
With legions' fresh ascent
First they dwindled like always
And then I regretted closing my eyes
See, this dream was not inevitable
In the war of reds and golds
Our hero was gold!
Anon, with each pronunciation
Banners were smouldering, then dying
And burning my intestines
Taking away, alas,
All that kept me alive
Hast thou not crept up upon me?
Cruel poison of Life!
Thou hast taken everything.
But what hurts me is that
You've slobbered filthily
O'er the delicate lips of a delicate girl
And I shall announce what you are...
Yes, away thou goest
Into the desert betwixt blue angels
Choose thy canon and execute
Never is the morning of thy age!
06 Sleep Is a Curse (05:37)
Life means more since I stopped thinking
Life means more because you keep me going
I dreamed that we had another moment, still
We could be the champions of art
I killed myself because I was stupid
Great things come, but only as a blessing
It took so long because nobody told me
The Son of God is nothing more than this
I think I have it, I'm an angel
Humbled as such to learn from you
the truth of Life is never spoken
And sleep hasn't ever done me any good yet
Sleep is a curse
Remember that moment the music led
our dying minds to Heaven?
The promises of Life are tragic
The one for me will never have those things
That night, the forest was seething
So many things, but her face was all I saw
You're so good, your face is all I see.
I think I have it, I'm an angel
Humbled as such to learn from you
The truth of Life is never spoken
And sleep hasn't ever done me any good yet
10 Monstrously Low Tide (06:46)
What upon the naked shore is this key?
All briny, yes, a haven for the briny things,
And a mystery to the sun which hasn't seen
The construction of this awful mystery!
What fashion'd thee, O key of slimy gold?
What secret portal among the waves and stones
Didst thou unlock in silence of the deep?
And most importantly, what sea-borne lazy eye,
Deceived by the broken light,
Lost among the ruins thee?
I saw the shore expand on that joyous day-
Breathed deeper, pulsed longer, sighed fuller,
Loved greater the mind of a curious boy,
Such as me!
I love thee, curious sea!
{Aeons can hide the relics of forgotten gods,
But showeth me thy treasures,}
And I will always look thereon.
I will always look with love thereon!
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By emanuele
From the third time on, you fall in love and there’s nothing you can do about it.
In one single track these fantastic musicians are capable of transitioning from jazz/progressive atmospheres to real death metal outbursts that will take your breath away.
