MY FRUIT PSYCHOBELLS... A SEED COMBUSTIBLE

My Fruit Psychobells... a Seed Combustible is the opening gambit of avant-metalers maudlin of the Well, recorded in and whilst the majority of the band members were students at New Hampshire College, is best described as a diamond in the rough. Of the bands three albums this one is the most heavy metal like, the bluesy and acoustic passages and songs would become prominent features later, but this is still an impressive and experimental take on prog metal eclipsing allot of what other bands where doing at the same time. The guiding hand of Toby Driver takes the songs through powerful death metal, to slower, almost drowning, doom metal and into a soft rock type of play with weird hybrids of all three in-between and blues/jazz elements thrown in for enhancement. The music and composition has a raw and unexperienced feel to it all which means that, brilliant as a lot of it is, they cant quite be held up to the very high quality that would be attained on Bath/Leaving your Body Map. This is typified in the fact that some of the dynamic changes in the music don't quite have the maximum effect and can seem almost clunky. I haven't heard the original '99 release of My Fruit Psychobells..., but I'm told the 2007 release (which I own) has a much higher sound quality to it. Having said that, the sound isn't anything special, all the instruments seem to be blurred together here and the bass is far too low in the mix most of the time, a great shame because Driver is brilliant bass player, though I've heard albums with much worse production (Soft Machines Third, for example). The bonus tracks (Beauty and The Crystal Margin), both from early recording sessions of the band, are a bit hit and miss, both have a markedly lower production quality with a definite DIY feel to them. Beauty is a track that probably should have been included on the album in the first place, but The Crystal Margin doesn't do much for me unfortunately. Between Blight of River Systems and Beauty, however, is an untitled track that consists of 2 minutes of laughter, very annoying. Overall an impressive debut that will surely appeal to fans of avant metal, but don't bother until you have heard the superior Bath or Leaving your Body Map first.