SilentScream213 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.

Warthur For me, Maudlin of the Well's comeback album shares a very similar approach to earlier albums such as Bath or Leaving Your Body Map, and consequently shares the same problems. A range of musical territories are explored, but they don't seem to hang together very well; individual sections of songs can be quite beautiful, but the transitions between those segments don't make much musical sense to me and so the effect they are going for eludes me. To be honest, I think there are other avant-metal and post-metal bands who do this sort of thing much better, but if you liked their earlier albums I suppose you'll enjoy this one too.

bartosso Maudlin farewell

Given how I'd never be able to find right words to review this album, I shall celebrate its elusive nature by writing a really long, lousy essay, unchained from any stylistic restraints. You will be bored, moved and bored again. Your time will be wasted with the only consolation being that I wasted even more of it myself.

Part The Second was fan funded and it's an entirely independent work with artwork conceived by Toby Driver himself. For those who don't know, he is the mastermind behind all motW and Kayo Dot albums, as well as co-creator/co-founder of Tartar Lamb, Vaura and several other projects. Along with Mories of Gnaw Their Tongues, he's my favourite avant rock composer. Speaking of which, I've just realized my 100th review on a metal site is actually of a non-metal album! This is getting worse by the minute!

Anyway, let's talk maths here. Part the second... but how? In half? Five tracks? Or maybe, judging by the artwork, time is relative, and there's no substantial difference between one second and one day. These are just fragments of the same substance which is apparently infinite. If not for us and our limited perception, there wouldn't be any fragments at all as you can't see contours of seconds, minutes, hours ticking on the clock or years, decades, centuries gradually turning your body into atomic dust. Time's abstract and bound with space. Yet still, we managed to part it, rationalize it. Even though this album looks like it was conceived rationally and divided into 5 tracks, it's not. It's art and art hates rational thinking. Art is based on intuition and driven by feelings. Sounds pretentious? Well, we could certainly have a decent discussion about what is art, what isn't or if it even is a real thing at all. I'm divided on the subject. It seems not to be a real thing but when I start to think it is, I consider art to be something that escapes rationalization. For now. Everything can be explained scientifically and surely will, yet for now there still are some gray areas when it comes to psychology and neurology. I'm glad there are. You have to live in a bubble in order to maintain your sanity. However small the bubble is, you can't let it pop or you'll fall into a trap of trying to perceive yourself from the outside of your own reasoning, which is obviously impossible.

Okay, without going too far into metaphysics, that's what I believe music is for. Not that music, or art in general, has any other purpose than to satisfy the one who makes it. For someone who listens to music, however, it has potential to be a gate into a world where you can understand and feel yourself without falling back on verbal reasoning. Whether music excites you, makes you happy and euphoric or moves you and makes you depressed, that doesn't matter. What matters is that for this brief moment you're free of restraints of your consciousness. I think that's why people often use drugs to "open their third eye", although lucky are those for whom music works like one. As far as I am concerned, some music does. Part the Second does. All that I've written until now was inspired by the album. If your first thought while going through this review was "This guy's high as fuck", then Part the Second really works. I'm sure some of you would gladly see more substantial commentary on the album, though. Here you go. Part the Second, as any abstract work of art, is a grower. I didn't fall in love with it instantly but my subconscious had already known I would have listened to it again. We tend to call it "getting hooked", intrigued by something for vague reasons. That's because you're not yet aware of something your brain already knows.

In terms of influences, it's the most seamless album by maudlin of the Well and Toby Driver in general. Maybe it's just me, but I can't name more than one influence without hesitation. The album surely is inspired by chamber music. Its structure could just as well be described as progressive/postmodern in a broad sense, but chamber music seems more precise to me due to a prominent role of violin passages. On the other hand, it plays with pacing and repetition in a similar way post-rock does. Luckily, you won't experience any straightforward, full-on build-ups that plague post-rock music nowadays. Part the Second is more sophisticated than that and for that reason it may appear as less accessible to some people. Still, to those accustomed to avant-garde complexity, this will be a refreshing experience. Part the Second doesn't do anything superfluous. It's just as complex as it has to be and never gets heavier than it should. What I say may seem quite vague, but this record really sounds as if it were aware of itself. Every sound, every word is there for a reason and for no reason at all. "This guy's higher than I thought". Well, hear me out, please! I believe that the more brilliant the work you create is, the more difficult it is to explain the choices you made. It's called talent. And talent is an unpredictable asshole.

Oh man, I'm fed up with this review so much right now. Nobody's going to read something that long anyway, so why bother? Most certainly because I felt like 100th review was a good occasion to do something different. Part the Second is one of those albums I couldn't review in a decent way, anyway. It's an album that gets to you on a very personal level, almost as if it were addressed directly to you. As if you were the only one to ever listen to it. The world is abstract after all, so maybe you are the only one listening to it? Maybe all is just an illusion? Or not even that. Maybe the bubble you're trying to preserve is all you actually have? Whatever the case, the final effort by maudlin of the Well is a reminder that music... is a drug! Haha, good one, ain't it?! You didn't see that coming, huh? Please, if you enjoy experimental music of any sorts, listen to Part the Second and get high from the experience. But secretly! Seriously people! Music's gonna be banned if someone from Da Guverment reads this review. I have to go, spec ops are at the door already!... [beep beep beep]

siLLy puPPy A much more interesting release for me than the previous albums. MAUDLIN OF THE WELL dropped the death metal they utilized on their double releases of 2001 and simply stuck to what I think they do the best, namely the post-rock aspects of their music and develop their ideas in that context. The result is a more cohesive and even-keeled flow of the tracks. There are still some elements of metal here and there but they are more suited to the overall feel of the album.

Despite this being a huge improvement in my opinion from the last two albums, I still don't feel that this deserves the masterpiece status that many seem to shower upon it. To me it is simply a very good representation of the type of experimental post rock that they are delivering. Of course music is subjective and this seems to move others more than it does me.

In my opinion, Toby Driver and his posse did a lot of refining of this particular sound in the KAY DOT projects which I actually prefer to MotW but i find that this particular album definitely has a more mature sound for MotW creating an atmosphere that I can get behind this time around and in many ways blurring the distinction between the MotW and KAYO DOT projects.

siLLy puPPy What a difference listening to music on a good pair of headphones makes. I have only heard this album a handful of times and it never really grabbed me. In fact it was hard to even focus on it because the dynamics are either too soft or too loud and I guess I was also distracted by multi-tasking. Well, the thing about headphones is that all these sounds I didn't even notice before that are in the tapestry of this album are now plain as day and apparently critical to the enjoyment level of this album. So in effect this album has transmogrified itself in my mind from a complete dud to one that I find somewhat interesting.

Having said that, I am in the camp that this isn't as developed as the KAYO DOT albums that follow which I prefer to MAUDLIN OF THE WELL. This album does showcase some interesting diversity with all the instruments and adopted genres in the mix. I guess the parts I like the best are the jazzy, post rock extensions that are a melodic and dissonant playground while the times they take a stab at death metal I find a little disingenuous simply because I am too familiar with death metal and this just doesn't cut it for me. Those parts I do find interesting with the metal are the bits when the post rock and metal overlap somewhat.

I really want to like this more but for me this boils down to being simply an interesting prelude to the more interesting KAYO DOT projects that develop the avant-garde and everything is properly mangled together to my liking where the timings, the timbres and the atmospheres feel genuinely more bizarre and alien. I think the two Interludes are possibly my favorite tracks on here.