‘Rwake is back with first album in 13 years’
social network. We have three or four friends in almost every state and ten more worldwide. We felt like, if we were going to do Rwake again, we wanted to do it the right way. We didn’t want to make another quick album to have something to sell at shows. We wanted to put our all into it.”While “The Return of Magik” is uniquely Rwake and decidedly not the work of a sludge band, Fugate says classic Rwake runs far deeper. Still, the band knows it has to maintain a connection with metal fans in order to have a successful comeback. “We’re conscious of what we do and what we’ve released in the past, but we try to keep it really organic. It’s about how it feels,” she said. “We’ve done the same thing for six albums. We know where we’re at at this point. It doesn’t matter what we release — it will sound like Rwake.”Because of that dynamic aesthetic, Rwake’s staying power was solidified in Little Rock and across the South early on. The band gained their first smattering of fans in the mid-Nineties, thanks to their distinct look and sound.Their first show was at Juanita’s Cantina Ballroom back in 1997. The Cantina was a mainstay for decades before closing in 2017. Rwake soon shifted to playing smaller gigs at the iconic club Vino’s. They frequented the Arkansas punk scene and mingled with bands like Soophie Nun Squad, the Architecture of Her Days and Trusty. The band inherently pulled from punk’s ethos of mutual respect, DIY and being scrappy in order to gain respect of fellow musicians and fans.
The reborn MagikIn many ways, “The Return of Magik” mirrors the band’s trajectory—brutal, raw, unapologetic. Fugate says the album title comes from the band’s long hiatus and subsequent return to the stage. Rwake’s new songs draw on the brutal violence of life—the death of Raley’s father, illnesses, car accidents and more. The first track, “Torture of Solitude,” stems from a period when Fugate and Terry had broken up, she was living in Nashville, and the isolation led her to a bout of depression. Still, she says, the song’s upbeat and catchy.“Torture of Solitude” opens the album with a smattering of soul-crushing waves of guitar feedback under Fugate’s haunting screams. It then builds into a symphony of chaos, with powerful guitars, pounding drums and howling vocals in the best tradition of Rwake. “There’s that lyrical story, but it’s got this fuzzy, droney ’90s sound,” Fugate said. “That’s the way I like it to be.”“The Return of Magik” isn’t the only metal album with long breaks between releases. Between 2005’s “Voices of Omens” and “Rest,” released in 2011, Rwake went six years without an official album. This time, the band broke the spell between albums with the release of “The Return of Magik.” This new album poses an important question: can Rwake maintain a balance between experimentation and accessibility, innovation and tradition? Or will they go the easy route and produce something that’s been done before?Reflecting the album’s thematic continuity, the album artwork features Fugate’s vision of a reaper figure—a skeleton with glowing eyes—hovering ominously over a churning sea at sunset. All bright hope is lost. The reaper, in discussions with Fugate’s daughter, finally receives his golden ticket
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