Rwake-- pronounced most commonly as "wake"-- are a quickly ascending, badass modern doom crew from Little Rock, Arkansas. "Modern" being the operative word: They may be warmly relaxing in chthonic, sludgy sounds but what wrestles in the plastic grooves of their fourth full-length, Voices of Omens, is nothing less than ingenious, forward-thinking metal.
It'd be lazy to call them doom; that they are, but their nimble-fingered heaviness reveals something far from one-dimensional-- definitely not your typical "tune down to B, drone 'til you're free" doom conformists. The attack is three-pronged: One part south of the Mason-Dixon sludge à la bands like EyeHateGod and Crowbar; one part bleak and epic soundscaping in line with mid-period Neurosis and Mastodon's arching fretboard calisthenics; and one part classic funereal doom in homage to the mighty Sabbath-revisionists Trouble and the underground snail crawl brutality of Grief. To assist the ominousness of the adroit dual guitars, haunting keyboards, and slow drums, two full-on screamers-- one a bearded pudgy dude, and one a dreaded wafer-thin often barefooted dudette-- plead with the Ancient Ones via interweaving distorted howls and screeches. And sometimes, just mega-effected creepy vocal washes.
True stoner/doom heads will dig the sprawling track times, most around seven minutes, three over nine (!), but those who like their jams apocalyptic (especially Neurosis freaks) will have come home. The album opens with the evocatively Southern, slightly Zeppelin-y acoustic "Intro"-- sounding like a mandolin to these ears. The prettiness stops quickly when a shriek introduces the cosmic spiral stair guitar climbs and cloaked, head-down, candle-and-moonlight processions found throughout. A surprising trick to their craft-- one akin to shouting "Boo!"-- is an abrupt tempo change attack, usually in the form of complex and note-y Mastodon-like fractals. Frequent sprinklings of deep-fried-and-battered Iommi solos only help matters. Besides these tempo variances one colorful dynamic is the frequent appearance of clean guitars, which either patiently build into earth-shaking stomps or nestle in the middle and in the end, like subtle red and orange fade-ins countering all of the black and gray despair.
