Gonna be frank: Rwake were never a band I really got on with. While there were a fair few acts in the post-sludge, post-post-metal sphere I fell hard for (US Christmas; Bloodiest) Rwake occupied a similar space for me as Minsk or YOB: bands that were clearly talented, ambitious and highly capable but tended to wash over me rather than drag me down into their murky depths.
The sheer scope and audacity of ‘The Return Of Magick’, then, managed to sideswipe me. Yes, the band have always leant into a sense of the epic, but it’s as if something epiphanic or shattering has happened to the band in the 10+ years they’ve been away. There’s a sense of odd, swampy mysticism running through the album: an unsteady, moonshine-soured quasi-spirituality that’s equal parts Dan Higgs, Roky Erickson and Robbie Basho that croaks and hiccups amid the mulchy riffs, tongue-chewed shrieks, Moog-soaked blurs and surprisingly pretty instrumentals.
Things are sodden and moss-covered, laced with layers of psychedelia that spread like evil-coloured mushrooms. At times the narrations teeter on the brink of hokiness, but there’s always a gnarled, weathered hand ready to drag them carefully back. This, I think, is the where the change might have occurred: there’s a lightness of touch despite the album’s undeniable heaviness, as though Rwake know now that to win you to their cult they’re better off muttering their sticky words slyly in your ear instead of bellowing them directly at your face.