The Arkansas band Rwake has been brought to my attention several times, but they never managed to really catch my interest. They’ve been active since 1996 and now they release their first record on Relapse Records entitled Voices Of Omens. Let’s see what it brings us.

Rwake is a highly depressing band that operates in the regions of sludgecore and doom metal. Probably ninety percent of the Metalrage visitors can stop reading now, because this is, as you can imagine, quite underground and restricted to a small target group. Now I happen to be a big fan of sludgecore and doom metal in average, but Rwake still doesn’t manage to grab my interest. After numerous spins they still don’t make me feel like some of the other acts in this world, like for instance Iron Monkey or Goatsnake does.

 

I do have to add that this band is quite a unique one. It consists of no less than six people, which means two guitars, bass, drums, vocalist and a female that also handles some vocals, but also plays with a moog and some samples. This sure adds some extra layers to some parts of the music, which is good, but I feel like more could’ve been done with this. The album itself is produced very messy which suits the style perfectly, but takes the clarity out of the music a bit. The music is  pretty diverse, ranging from harsh, depressive, heavy, slow riffs with agonizing screams, to almost rock-like parts with guitar fiddles (that I really can’t stand to be honest), to gentile acoustic passages. Those passages are also my favourite parts on the album, because they really convey something to me, although it’s nothing happy of course.

 

After hearing this release I can baldly say that Rwake is not my cup of tea and not even Voices Of Omens have changed that. I guess that quite some manically depressed doomgoths will love this stuff, but there’s nothing that really grabs you and takes you for a trip. Which is too bad, because with this amount of experience and such a big line-up one should be able to create something out of this world I think.