progwest

First off: Thanks for writing the review - you've vocalized what I always imagined some people would feel about motW live.

I guess my only quibble would be the statement that you are delivering an "objective review" which would basically translate to an "objective opinion", a contradiction by any reasonable definition...That and the focus on command of the instrument, which I usually find to be besides the point when appreciating a bands' performance. And I too found Avant Garden not to my liking, but that's purely personal preference. They are very good at what they do.

But for the most part I agree. Now that I've left the band I feel I can say (sorry guys) that maudlin of the Well has never put on a live show that even comes close to doing the albums justice, or standing on its own as a work of art or performance or whatever you want to call it. This is something I've pretty much always felt, and it's not sour grapes twoards the band now that I've left. Excuses like: "Two of our members were partially incapacitated", "we weren't playing on our own equipment", "We hadn't practiced together in six months", etc. are all fine and well, but they're as lame as any other excuse when it comes to the audiences perspective. Great live bands are those that overcome whatever obstacles are presented - because there are *always* obstacles. Opeth at Milwaukee Metal Fest are a great example. The room sucked, the equipment sucked, the set times and everything else imaginable sucked, but Opeth still sounded great. I have so much respect for that.

Tuning time might be motW largest problem. It's always been a problem, and it's always been extremely frustrating to me personally. Yes, we were supposed to have a guitar tech. No, he didn't get a handle on the various tunings, meaning that the guitarists had to tune themselves. Again, this is an excuse, and is therefore sucky. No matter how many shows we've played we've never come anywhere near being a "well-oiled machine".

Personally, I think the type of show that motW puts on has never been something I would have enjoyed as an audience member. If people do enjoy, that's great. I love playing that music, and I love the music itself, but from the other side of the monitors I don't think it would be my thing. There are a number of elements that happen in the studio that the band, myself of course included, has been unable to reproduce for whatever reason.

Then again, the long set times offered by ProgWest are generally something that I find off-putting. Except for a few bands that I am fanatical about, 45 minutes is my absolute limit, 25-30 being ideal.

Anyhow, I just wanted to write in with at least partial agreeance, so as not to have the only band response be to bristle at the slag. Your points are good ones, and things that *need* to be taken into account if motW is to continue playing live. This stuff should be taken as constructive criticism, not offensive slander, as I'm sure you're not the only one who felt this way.
Toby, Greg, sorry if I've pissed you off.
 
i was not at progwest, but i heard many people saying that MotW live is shit due to the kind of music they perform and due to the quantity of band members together on stage...

anyway, i really don't care about it...i just would like to wish good luck for you guys and hope you come to Brazil for some gigs in my house...i'd like to jam with you...i'd like to play drums or sing the song "stones of october's sobbig", one of my favourites, ok?

ah, why didn't you play that song at progwest? fuck...

: o )
 
i am not pissed at you sam.

My main gripe with the review was not the points that were made but the way they were made.

I didn't intend to make excuses for us because you make excuses for when you play bad and to me we played awesomely at that show. All the crap I talked about was just obstacles that we overcame and rose above to fufill our committment to playing.

To say that the audience didn't like us in a general sense like that and to say that the promoters were "kicking themselves" for having us, to me, undermines the hard work that each and every band member did to prepare for that show. We rehearsed our asses off for months before the gig to make sure we did well. I mean what more could we have done besides rehearse? We worked our asses off and showed everyone there that no matter what happens we can still be an amazing band live.

I do agree on some of the points you make but I was upset because the review seemed to me to take away from the integrity and sheer guts of some of the band members who really put their heart into making that show go off well.
 
Baliset, I agree with you. You are absolutely right. It was wrong for me to make that statement, so as of right now, I officially retract it. You were invited to play ProgWest, you prepared for it, and you performed in spite of certain apparent and not-so-apparent hurdles. And your band had to come a long way to do it.

Sam Gutterman, your former drummer, does have a point, which I had also thought about. With a band twice as large as a typical quartet or quintet, an authentic reproduction of album ambience in a live setting is not to be attained nor even expected. This may be due to a variety of factors, e.g. one or more members may not be able to make rehearsals or travel to the concert, live instrument mixing, etc. If I may ask, why did your female vocalist depart after the recording of the album? I still feel the additional guitarist wasn't necessary.

Yes, Maudlin Of The Well gave festgoers a kick in the pants. But Daemonia provided the jolts of electricity throughout the rows of seats.
 
I was probably a little harsh in what I said as well. But I still basically stand by it. I just received the audio files for the live recording - so maybe that will give me a little bit of perspective on the whole thing.

I guess my main point was to say that motW is not (yet!) a professional-sounding live band, and that it has a long way to go before it gets there. The band only has a couple years of sporadically playing shows under its belt, and I am sure that many of the things I spoke of will be worked out in time.

As to recreating the album: I think that's a big part of the problem. Any attempt to recreate a situation which involves multiple takes of each part, mixing, overdubbing, etc. will inevitably fail unless the music is very simple or the band is right the fuck on. Neither of those are yet true for maudlin of the Well. Hopefully the latter (and never the former!) eventually will be.

I did not mean the previous as a diss on the band, or any kind of an apology. It's just my assessment of the state of things. And about half that is just my personal preference conflicting with the way the band is.
 
Also, parts performed by the keyboardist were simple to the point of banality. He needs more room in the overall scheme, unless his role is simply to provide mundane textures which sound out of place.
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You mean he should play stuff more along the lines of Dream Theater or Rhapsody's keyboardist? I fully agree! I keep nagging Terran to turn up the wank but he just won't listen to me!

I still feel the additional guitarist wasn't necessary.
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I once saw this band called Isis who also had three guitarists, and the whole time i was wishing their third guitarist would just break his guitar or something! I mean, all I could hear was just this big wall of distortion and effects, and they were playing CHORDS! I mean, come on guys, how the fuck do you expect me to sing along to that? And like, the sound of the guitars completely surrounded me, coming at me from every angle and it made the vocals sound all buried in the mix and stuff! Obviously these guys have a thing or two to learn about music!
 
Originally posted by FuSoYa
I once saw this band called Isis who also had three guitarists, and the whole time i was wishing their third guitarist would just break his guitar or something! I mean, all I could hear was just this big wall of distortion and effects, and they were playing CHORDS! I mean, come on guys, how the fuck do you expect me to sing along to that? And like, the sound of the guitars completely surrounded me, coming at me from every angle and it made the vocals sound all buried in the mix and stuff! Obviously these guys have a thing or two to learn about music!
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haha Toby, EXCELLENT point!
 
FuSoYa/Tobias:

"You mean he should play stuff more along the lines of Dream Theater or Rhapsody's keyboardist? I fully agree! I keep nagging Terran to turn up the wank but he just won't listen to me!"

<Turn up the wank.> I like that. No, he doesn't have to be the Rick Wakeman or Jordan Rudess of his generation. His parts didn't seem to gel with the music. More dynamics may not be a bad thing, either.

With regard to your second paragraph, your sarcasm is well-taken, but it only undermines the notion that motW on album & motW onstage sound like two different bands. That might be a good thing, for a jazz-fusion or electronic group.
 
Originally posted by FuSoYa
I once saw this band called Isis who also had three guitarists, and the whole time i was wishing their third guitarist would just break his guitar or something! I mean, all I could hear was just this big wall of distortion and effects, and they were playing CHORDS! I mean, come on guys, how the fuck do you expect me to sing along to that? And like, the sound of the guitars completely surrounded me, coming at me from every angle and it made the vocals sound all buried in the mix and stuff! Obviously these guys have a thing or two to learn about music!
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have you ever considered touring with ISIS? . . .and by touring i mean playing ten shows in edmonton over the course of a month.
 
Me too. Looks like i missed some stuff.

It's definitely hard to make that leap from being a 'studio' band to being a 'live' band when you play the kind of music motW plays. In the studio, they have layers upon layers of stuff happening and it's sometimes near impossible to recreate that live. Hell, even with the few layers that ND does it's hard to recreate them live. Bands such as Macabre & Cannibal Corpse (just examples) basically play live what they play on record- not a whole lot else added. The music is not really simple, but the instrumentation is simple enough to be effective, yet easily transferred live. That's one reason the live experience for those bands is that much more effective for the audience- they hear what they expect.
From a music standpoint, I personally find it more interesting to see what a band like motW will do live with their music when you know beforehand that there's so much going on that they can't possibly do it all- it's kind of exciting to see how things will be arranged (like toby doing maria's vox). But I'm a geek.

I think even Isis when I saw them sounded exactly like their records- with the 3 guitars and keyboards, pretty much everything was covered (except the singer from 27). Opeth as well pretty much keep their records stripped down to their instrumentation, which makes them that much more easily transferred live.
 
I'd just like to point out that pretty much 90% of all metal bands suck live. Tis the sad, sad truth. They may be able to play the music ok, but they almost always lack stage presence, energy, charisma and everything else that makes a good show great.
 
Sorry to bring this old thread back up to the top, but I haven't been reading the board lately and just noticed it. As a ProgWest promoter and the person responsible for inviting motW to the fest, I'd like to address a couple comments made by "Feralkid" (who, for the record, has with my gratitude for coming to the show and posting an honest review).

I speculate whoever invited Maudlin Of The Well to ProgWest probably kicked himself after the performance
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You're wrong. They put on a great show and kicked some prog fan ass. Is the band capable of a better performance? Likely. Even NDV's gang of tour-hardened professionals didn't get every note right.

there are many more bands, local and regional, that ticketbuyers would have rather seen
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Maybe, but WE wanted to see motW rock our house, and we put on the show. Otherwise we woulda booked The Flower Kings or some paint-by-numbers proggy prog band.

the lapse between tracks for instrument-tuning is something that should be worked out in the future.
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As I think a motW member pointed out, our guitar tech wasn't tremendously helpful. We had a fantastic stage crew for the most part, but our guitar tech just wasn't prepared (or willing) to deal with motW's tunings. Live and learn. I agree the lapse between tracks was distracting, but I imagine the band was crazy nervous and didn't have a lot of between-song banter worked out. It would've helped, though.

Daemonia provided the jolts of electricity throughout the rows of seats.
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Claudio Simonetti has been recording and performing music for thirty years. The guys in motW are less than half his age and have performed, what, twelve times? After listening to their CDs and seeing their ProgWest performance, I'm convinced that they have LONG careers ahead of them. Speaking on behalf of the other ProgWest guys, I'm exceedingly proud to have hosted an important gig for them and to have introduced them to a larger audience.
 
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