This website, as regular readers know, simply loves hearing from new bands, the future of intelligent rock music becoming more secure with each passing month.
Maul Tide hail from Canada, and have released their debut album, Visual Plea, an exciting mix of the post-rock, post-punk, math rock, with some extreme power combined with sumptuous melodies. It is a heady ride, for sure, and Jake Cummings on guitar and bass, and Adam McDonald on drums are ones to keep an eye out for. A shout out to a great cover by RedBloodInk, and Pat Hills in California who has done a fine job of the mixing and mastering.
You can get hold of the album on Bandcamp at https://maultide.bandcamp.com/album/visual-plea and pop along to the distributor for some physical copy at https://elasticstage.com/maultide/releases/visual-plea-album
Nine tracks here. Let’s discuss and listen.
Proximity Yurz (an early contender for this website’s “title of the year” award) is a short introduction to proceedings, with what I can only describe as a sort of industrial Rush feel, all three elements of guitar, bass, drums combining very expertly alongside some very strange programming.
Mmmmmantis is another gorgeously eccentric title and follows directly from the opener. It features some crashing riffs, not least of which is the bass underpinning it all, but there is a hypnotic melody in this as well. I have embedded it below. It is the sort of music that the 90’s and early noughties incarnation of Crimson could well be recording were they still extant.
Leaking follows. Some clever stick work starts us off, with the fretwork intricate in a track which is noticeably more subdued than the opening pair, some of this is rather lovely, a sort of soulful improvisational heavy jazz, the intensity building as it progresses.
Subnet Fisheries reminds me of Thela Hun Ginjeet, but without the words. Whirling and swirling, in your face, a modern experimental jazz rock song to savour. It is embedded below.
Cure Cut is a nice slow burner, the simple notes again drawing the listener in to the sound and creativity. There is a nice melody at the core of this.
Tyranny Sorry Rex is a wonderful play on words, and there is more room for the theme to breathe in a song over five minutes in length, with some very precise and rhythmic riffs crashing out of the speaker. What they have done expertly here is turn a piece which could have left the listener cold into something of genuine fascination.
Peepin’ on that 2037 Bowlcut Attitude, again what a title, is the longest track at just short of seven minutes, a sort of epic length compared with much of the rest. It is embedded below for you. There is a psych sensibility at play here harking back to a period when these two’s parents were probably very young, and the ability to use quieter passages to fill the listening space is a very good quality to master, before a masterful expansion at the end.
The penultimate track is Pyramid Addicts, which returns with intensity to the feel of the opening pieces, the bass especially prominent against some heavily intricate drumming. Spacey and dramatic.
We close with Bascada, which has a YouTube visualiser video for you to enjoy. There is a manic groove to this, again transporting me back several decades, very expertly executed, a grand noise as it transports itself.
If you like your progressive music on the experimental end of the spectrum, and especially if you appreciate acts such as The (industrial) Crims, Hawkwind, and the like, you will find a lot to enjoy here. Maul Tide are an act I will definitely be following.