Jadan Kerr

Instructor Jenny Findlay

Eng. 1021

9 March 2023

“Bath”: Entering Your Body Map

Maudlin of the Well’s “Bath” is a complex and layered album that explores the depths of the human mind with its unconventional musical style. Released on the first of January in 2001, the album carved out a unique quiet spot for itself in the metal canon with its innovative use of avant-garde jazz and brutal death metal. Composed and written by musician Toby Driver, it received a mix of skepticism and adoration from critics and casual listeners alike. Skeptics describe it as a “conceptual nightmare,” stating that the opposing musical influences have a high likelihood of alienating listeners(Prog Archive). These contrasting styles are indeed a staple of “Bath”; it juggles  acoustic jazz and bone-shaking metal to tell a powerful story. A story of contradiction, a story of self-destruction, a story that never touches the land of the waking, persisting only in dreams. It uses contrasting elements, themes of the conscious and unconscious, and Freudian psycho-analytical concepts to tell its story.

The first two songs on “Bath” are among the most striking examples of contrast used in the album. The first song–entitled “The Blue Ghost / Shedding Qliphoth”--is an entirely instrumental track, utilizing acoustic guitar punctuated with wandering saxophone and light drums. It adds layer after layer of serene instrumentation over its eight-minute length, until it concludes with a punchier, more intense version of the same progression repeated throughout the song, this time played with high-gain guitar and heavier drumming. Track two, “They Aren’t All Beautifull”, can only be described as a complete and total upset of this precedence. It’s an absolutely brutal song, complete with low growls, agonized screeches, and wailing guitars. It tries its damndest to knock the listener off kilter, beginning with volume at 11, and every instrumentalist seemingly trying to break their instrument. The pounding crescendo rises higher and higher in pitch and intensity, until it finally lets up, and the growled vocals begin. The lyrics describe a distorted love using repulsive and aggressive similes: “You are as perfect as opened veins/[...] /Drag me through love’s excrement”(1:2, 2:2). The lead vocals are accompanied by the backup vocalist, who has some way of penetrating the overwhelming sonic assault of  “They Aren’t All Beautifull” with their agonized wails. Overall the experience the song creates is one of sharp contrast, and profound discomfort.

“They Aren’t All Beautifull” uses its intense style, and provocative lyrics to explore a toxic relationship. With lines like “Drag me through love’s excrement / Caress me with cruell claws”(2:2-3) the speaker is describing a relationship that’s harmful to their wellbeing, but one that’s attractive nonetheless. They’re trapped in it, as it takes place in a nightmare they can’t wake up from: “ Let me hold you in my sleep / Let me wake and damn this art”(2:5-6).  The lyrics also decry the creation this relationship inspires, “Every word bleeds from me / Just like a thousand wars”(2:7-8). The lyrics use parallelism to convey the aggressive, painful nature of the art inspired by this love:

See through my eyes /

Poetry! /

Gouge my eyes with thorns /

Breathe through my lungs /

I will breathe seawater soon /

(3:1-4)

These lyrics liken poetry to looking through another’s eyes, or breathing through another’s lungs. This simile is then turned on its head, with the speaker declaring that this poem in particular is like living through someone gouging their eyes out with thorns, or drowning through another person’s lungs. Considering the violent and repulsive nature of the song, it’s easy to conclude that the “Poetry” the lyrics are referring to is in fact the song itself. Inspired by a cruel, toxic love, it’s a reflection of that toxicity. The author is making the point that all love, and by extension all art, is not necessarily beautiful. It’s a window into the mind of the creator, not a pretty painting to admire. From these themes and the meaning of the lyrics, it suddenly becomes clear why some of the compositional choices in the song were made. It uses the juxtaposition to “The Blue Ghost” to amplify a feeling of revulsion to this ugly song. The grating screams of the accompanying vocalist are prefaced by brief moments of light guitar, similar to the one used in the first track, which further enhances the impact of these powerful vocals. Like gouging one’s eyes out with thorns, or one’s lungs filling with seawater, “They Aren’t All Beautifull” offends the senses and takes the listener’s breath away.

The theme of dreams and the unconscious is one present throughout “Bath”. The third song, “Heaven And Weak” acts as our introduction to these themes. The track begins as a return to jazzy form, opening with a slow bass, and a pizzicato violin progression. This song features the same vocalist with the hair-raising scream in “They Aren’t All Beautifull”, but the agonized screech is replaced by soft intonations that slip right into the layered backing instrumentation. The provocative lyrics include references to a “swan’s wings bloodied at the joints”(1:1), as well as statements threatening the subject of the song: “Each time you dream in color I’ll be holding your head under”(2:3). The track seems to be walking a path into the shadows, every passing moment it grows ever-so-slightly more intense. The vocalist sings “You missed your way out!”(2:5), and the song transitions to a heavier style. The acoustic guitar is replaced by its wailing electric counterpart, the vocals are still clean, but they’re more strained, a step closer to the intensity of “They Aren’t All Beautifull”. The guitar suddenly backflips into a breakneck solo, then a wall of powerful distorted chords begin. The vocalist begins singing once more, but the style is even more aggressive, lyrics downright violent. They describe the speaker “slowly inserting the dagger”(3:2). The song ends on this note, with the vocalist repeating its threat to harm the subject of the song.

The binary nature of the previous two tracks is subverted by this song, instead of being either acoustic, or metal, we have one slowly morphing into the other. Lyrically it’s also more complex, giving us an introduction to the conflict the rest of “Bath” centers on. The first half of the song is the speaker defining themselves against the subject of the song, while the second half is the speaker threatening to harm this other character. Throughout the track the speaker frequently refers to themself as having a higher station than the other character, even going so far as to say that while the other will “welter on [their] hurried path” the speaker will become “as a prince to the world”(2:8). When describing this second character the speaker gives some insight into their identity:

Who are you that darkness my shade? You burned my door down /[...]

And each time you dream in colour, I’ll be holding your head under /  (2:1, 2:3)

The speaker referring to the other as “my shade” seems to imply that they see this other as their darker half. In lines like “You’ll hear me now”, it’s clear that the speaker’s turbulent relationship to their shade is because the speaker is being ignored by it. If we consider the fact that the speaker is only able to access this shade when it “dreams in colour”, everything begins to fall into place. The speaker is the subconscious, and the shade the conscious. Repressed by the conscious, and without it to give structure to its emotional outbursts, the subconscious becomes angrier and angrier. It decides that the only way to free itself from its repressed state is to attack the conscious when it wanders into the land of the subconscious:

And each time you dream in color I’ll be holding your head under /[...]

Terror I watch you nervous slowly insert the dagger again (2:3, 3:2)

After its long slow escalation the song climaxes with the subconscious repeatedly promising to stab the conscious as it dreams, reflecting the chaotic nature of the subconscious without the conscious to tether it. This is the conflict that “Bath” explores, the push and pull of these two opposing forces, fighting for dominance in a sun-kissed dreamland.

        Track 7, “Girl With A Watering Can” dives deeper into the conscious, and how it attempts to survive without a subconscious to rely on. This concept lends itself well to Freudian psycho-analysis, we see explorations of the libido and the concept of a “phantasy”. The song opens with a clarinet reprise of the progression found in “The Blue Ghost”. The clarinet solo ends, and clean guitar begins, accompanied by light drums. A female vocalist begins singing, stating that “Real love is dying for a phantasy”(1:3). The lyrics are depressive, describing lost loves and “The wreck of a soul, amidst thorns bleeding”(3:2). The song transitions to chunky distorted guitar without changing tempo, giving us a slightly less jarring switch to “Bath”’s metal mode. After a brief interlude the song picks back up with the familiar male vocalist singing in a similarly serene style, joined by distorted, and backing clean guitar. The speaker states: “I will laugh and catch my own tears”(4:4) before the song transitions to a fiery solo, with clean backing electric guitar. A unique moment, “Bath” exists in both its metal and clean modes at once to powerful effect. The solo ends, but the distorted rhythm guitar continues working in conjunction with the clean guitar. The vocalist states: “You were my everything, and you took / It all away”(5:7) and the song ends.

        One theme mentioned in this track is love. Because “Bath” is focused on the relationship between a person’s conscious and subconscious, we can apply the Freudian term libido to this love. According to Freud, libido is defined as much more than simple sexual attraction. It includes everything from attraction to art, beauty, and oneself(Mcleod). According to Freud, “all the libido is accumulated in the id[...]. The id sends part of this libido out into [love objects]”(Freud The Ego And The Id, 63). In other words the id is the great reservoir of libido, from which love is directed onto love objects by the ego. If we consider the conscious the ego, and the unconscious the id, we can apply this lens to “Bath”.

The line “Real love is dying for a phantasy”(1:3) is referring to the libido that the ego lost access to by suppressing the id. Without the id the ego is physically unable to feel any kind of fulfillment in their waking hours, leading to it spending more and more time searching for these things in the unconscious world. The Freudian term “phantasy” is used, which is defined as: “an imaginative fulfillment of frustrated wishes, conscious or unconscious”(Hayman). An example of this wish-fulfillment is seen on Track 8, “Birth Pains of Astral Projection”:

We lived in the rowans, avoiding mad water /

Spoiling our children with tea and mushrooms /

Early in the autumn, as we slept by the oven /

Someone sent a shape who tore the house apart /

Our bond shattered /

I was drawn away / (2:1-3:2)

This brief reprieve from the darkness and provocative imagery also immediately follows the most intense metal segments on “Birth Pains Of Astral Projection”, conveying the peace the ego feels in these moments. These moments which are of course disturbed by the “shape” sent by the id, who quite literally tears apart this peace, returning the music to its intense state. The ego is so invested in these phantasies, that when it awakens from its dreams it mourns the death of the memories and experiences that were sustained in its unconscious state: “I held all of heaven dead in my arms, / And in one moment I knew all of hell”(“Girl With A Watering Can” 2:1-2). After suffering these losses, the speaker acknowledges that while they experience nothing but joy in these “perfect” moments, they are anything but real: “In a perfect garden all flowers flourish, / In this real garden my flower knows thirst”(“Girl With A Watering Can”, 5:1-2).

In the last line before the fiery solo on “Girl With A Watering Can” the speaker states: “When the moment has pass’d thousands will die /[...]And I will laugh and catch my own tears”(4:2, 4:4). The death of thousands is again referring to the loss of the dream-world after waking, but the second line is particularly interesting. The speaker promises to catch their own tears, which is referring to the ego “catching the tears” or comforting the estranged id. This line represents the ego finally seeing the value and importance of the id, instead of maintaining that it should be repressed. This promise to catch the id’s tears is fulfilled in the ending of “Birth Pains of Astral Projection”. The ego is “caught praying in the shade”(8:2), making contact with the id for the first time since its suppression. This symbolizes the main character’s growth throughout “Bath”, finally able to accept themself as a whole, rather than as just a severed ego.

        There are albums about life and there are albums about death. “Bath” is an album for everything in between. It uses contrast, explorations of the conscious and unconscious, and Freudian concepts to paint a stunningly complex and layered picture of the human mind. It peels back the curtain of waking existence to explore the true reasons why we do what we do. It encompasses those transformative and moving dreams we immediately forget upon waking. It takes all the techniques it utilizes–contrast, themes of the unconscious, psycho-analysis–and elevates them. From the subversion of the common model of the “primal subconscious”, and the characterization of the id and ego that takes Freud’s clinical theories, and fills in the lines with brilliant color, there isn’t a moment where “Bath” stops innovating. While the phrase “conceptual nightmare” does indeed apply, instead of languishing in its own self-importance, “Bath” allows its subject matter and storytelling to take the stage.

Works Cited

Maudlin Of The Well. “Bath”. Dark Symphonies, 2001.

Maudlin Of The Well. “The Blue Ghost/Shedding Qliphoth.” “Bath”, Dark Symphonies, 2001, https://open.spotify.com/track/1wHUI3onA9qsfAjJCWfaFC?si=ad3167b81dbe4284.

Maudlin Of The Well. “They Aren’t All Beautifull.” “Bath”, Dark Symphonies, 2001, https://open.spotify.com/track/1AwgtSPJaC7Hmy04ZRyl1t?si=58db6bc86fbc40fc.

Maudlin Of The Well. “Heaven And Weak.” “Bath”, Dark Symphonies, 2001, https://open.spotify.com/track/3UQGWXAikSh4VvkbVvOjqm?si=8e11ca218e6f4293.

Maudlin Of The Well. “Girl With A Watering Can.” “Bath”, Dark Symphonies, 2001, https://open.spotify.com/track/2CwRfT7ciM4uBGmpusyVff?si=61b471b6d3454b15.

Maudlin Of The Well. “Birth Pains Of Astral Projection.” “Bath”, Dark Symphonies, 2001, https://open.spotify.com/track/6BW7M0TcYK8YhqI3GbC53R?si=989932ade1194b86.

Mcleod, Saul. “Freud's Id, Ego, and Superego: Definition and Examples.” Simply Psychology, 8 Mar. 2023, https://simplypsychology.org/psyche.html

Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle., pp. 1–83., https://doi.org/10.1037/11189-001.

Freud, S. (1923). The Ego and the Id. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923- 1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works, 1-66

Hayman, A. “What do we mean by 'phantasy'?.” The International journal of psycho-analysis vol. 70 ( Pt 1) (1989): 105-14.

frenchie. “A  masterpiece of progressive rock certainly is NOT an applicable term to use for this album.” Prog Archives, 16 Oct. 2005, https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=8356

Pietropaolo, Paolo. “D Major: Miss Congeniality.” CBC Music, https://www.cbcmusic.ca/posts/11774/signature-series-d-major.