Every now and then there comes a band here that shake the very foundations of everything I know about Metal music. In fact, they are rare, very rare. That’s why they have a special name between us reviewers, promoters, and academics; they are the genre pushers, bands that go beyond the understood, or agreed, about a genre. Rwake with “The Return of Magik” are one of them as the album bounces the total musical chaos with an organized and easy to label music. It would be an easy task to review this album if Rwake did this alternating the tracks; but, no, the problem is that they do it in each track.
The musical foundation of “The Return of Magik” is Doom Metal, so far an easy task. The problem is that from Doom Metal known features, Rwake add to their dough many other ingredients that analyzed separetely would never work. For instance, the folk structures – almost led zepellinian – of “Distant Constellations and the Psychedelic Incarceration” which break all the expectations created from the album. From where I am standing, Doom Metal collaborates with only the shoegazed slow cadences and long lengthed tracks – the Doom Metal foundation I aforementioned. Well, great albums are like this. They are unexpected. “Distant Constellations and the Psychedelic Incarceration” is almost fourteen minutes long with lots of tempo and cadence shifts including long intrumentals moments, a feature not common among Doom Metal bands. As a curious fact, there is a track called “Φ,” the Greek letter Phi used in physics to represent wave functions in quantum mechanics, such as in the Schrödinger equation and bra–ket notation: . The golden ratio 1.618033988749894848204586834…
“You Swore We’d Always Be Together” kickstarts “The Return of Magik” with a mix of sweet melodies interwoven with disturbing vocals. For some time in the track these two work as if they were independent entities. The beautiful main guitar solo reinforces this impression As I said before, instrumentals are the highlight of the album and what give Rwake their signature. It takes skilled musicians to achieve this level of proficiency. The most interesting thing is that if the fan doesn’t pay good attention, Rwake‘s music sounds simple. Album tittle “The Return of Magik” represents the musical chaos the band explores here and there with many layers of guitars plus the blast beats drummer Jeff beats. Another curious about the band is that only guitarist Austin performs only one function in the album as all of the others do more than one. Vocalist C.T., for instance, is responsible for vocals, words, theme while Britany is responsible for energy peddler, keys and a microphone. By the way, it is the first time I know the existence of a 12 string bass. Never heard before.
“The Return of Magik” is an album made by very skilled musicians nd that reflects directly on the music my dear child of the night will hear. It also proves prowness is not only for showing off.
Rwake “The Return of Magik” will be released on March 14th via Relapse Records.
Track Listing:
1. You Swore We’d Always Be Together
2. The Return of Magik
3. With Stardust Flowers
4. Distant Constellations and the Psychedelic Incarceration
5. In After Reverse
6. Φ
Watch “The Return of Magik” official music video here:
Source: metaladdicts.com
