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Interviews
Hellride
Music: First,
can you give us the scoop on how Maudlin of the Well got together? Where,
when, why that kinda thing... and whose in the band and what do Tobias:
Byron and Greg and I have been friends since high school and
we pretty much had no other friends. :) So we'd stay over each others'
houses a lot and talk about weird stuff. One night, Byron and Greg were
staying over my house and Greg passed out, so Byron and I decided to go
for a walk. We started talking about how I wanted to spend all my time
on music and Byron said he wanted to spend all his time on writing. We
both have really similar tastes, so we decided to collaborate and use
my music against his words and see what happened. Greg had a four track
so we stole it from him and made some demos. We also asked Greg to play
some solos on the songs because that's what he was exceptionally good
at. Byron and I told Greg that we were a band and that he was in the band,
but he refused to be in the band because he was dead set on starting his
own power metal band with his own power metal songs (something which he
still wants to do to this day), but he agreed to continue to guest star.
At some point he decided he liked us enough and "joined" the
band making it the three of us. ;) Then we made some more demos and then
went off to college. There, I met several awesome musicians and wanted
to continue the project, plus they had a studio there that we as music
majors could use limitlessly. So we made a few more demos and had a few
more musicians on the demos. It was pretty much like that, a studio project,
til dark symphonies signed us in fall of 1999 and then we became a "real"
band, with permanent members and a full line-up, with actual rehearsals
and stuff. Our live line up is as follows: Toby on guitar, Greg on guitar,
Josh on guitar, Sam on drums, Terran on keyboards, sax, and flute, Jason
on trumpet, Maria on vocals, Byron on keyboards and vocals, and Nick on
bass. On the album some of us played a few instruments, like I played
cello for example. Hellride
Music: From the perspective of this ultra-jaded reviewer, Maudlin
of the Well is something that is without a doubt, TRULY DIFFERENT in every
sense of the word. It's a collage of maybe parts of Godspeed You Black
Emperor, maybe Tobias:
I'm
going to list these artists as the most important musical influences:
Sky Cooper,old TIAMAT, Jane's Addiction, Nirvana, Radiohead, Esoteric
(UK), dISEMBOWELMENT, Faith No More, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Quicksand-
I'm just saying these because these are the bands who I can hear moments
of in our music. There are shitloads more of course. motW sounds like
pretty mellow guitar work with effects, with spots of crushing doom/death/thrash
metal. All the compositions have a sombre and floatatious mood. I don't
know how to describe it.
Hellride Music: Whose the female voice is on "Girl With a Watering Can" off of the "Bath" album? I think I'm in love.... actually there are quite a few singers in the band. Who gets the death growls and who get's the crooning? Tobias: That's Maria singing on that song. Generally, she does all the female vocals but I do some of them every now and again. ;) I also do the whiny vocals and Byron does all the evil shit.
Tobias: Up to now, it's been me writing the skeleton of the songs. Then everyone will add what they're good at- Terran does the keyboards, Greg does the leads, Byron does the words. It's not so democratic and we don't write songs as a group. I've been in bands that write songs as a group before and it just doesn't;t work too well, in my opinion. I would rather each of us completely and fascistically write a song and tell everyone how it goes. Terran did that with The Ferryman, for example. It's his song, and we obeyed him. Tiny things with like how to play the riff, or how the drum fills went and stuff, the band takes care of. But mainly, the arrangements and basis of each song is a person's own composition that everyone adds their own flavor to, texturally.
Tobias:
I can't say that I do- I love the music on all of the albums.
I can't listen to Psychobells though because I don't like the production.
I can't get past it, it's a shame. Right now, the ones that fully define
our concept are the new ones, and I think it'll always be like that. I'm
progressing more personally, but the most recent landmark in my progression
and discovery is the new records. Next time we do an album, the best one
that defines us will be that new one. Hellride Music: How about the live MoW experience? What is the show like and what has the reception been? Heck, how do you all fit on stage?! Tobias: We haven't had any trouble fitting everyone on stage yet- but we haven't played out that much so far. The reception is always pretty good- we're all really into it when we play, because come on, nothing can beat playing music. The only real problems we've had are with the mix. We don't have our own sound guy (we should get one!) so the club's sound person usually doesn't know how to handle all the instruments and dynamics we have. We don't do any weird theatrics or anything though. It's about music, for us.
Tobias: We would love to. How to book a tour though? I have no idea. First, we need to find a more popular band that will tour with us so that people actually come to the shows.
Tobias: Esoteric, Anathema, Leonard Cohen, Radiohead, and a little Neurosis.
Positively, first of all mad phat props to the Esoteric niggas from the UK who are the least crunk band in existence today, all the homies in da house got ta represent, secondly I'd like to give a shout-out to Rain Fell Within, and to Metal Mike Dawg because he is the bomb-diggity. Read the
Hellride Music review
of maudlin of the Well's Leaving Your Body Map and Bath
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You
haven't heard anything like this before. Once
in awhile there comes a band that has the talent and the balls to redefine
musical genres. maudlin of the Well combines a dreamlike take on Prog/Death/Darkwave/Doom
sensibilities to make a Red House Painters/dISEMBOWELMENT/God Speed you
Black Emperor hybrid called "Astral Metal". It's amazing. Hellride
Music talks to vocalist/ percussionist/ keyboardist/ celloist Toby Driver
about the band and it's unique approach to making music. 