RWAKE – The Return of Magik

RELEASE YEAR: 2025
BAND URL: https://rwake.bandcamp.com/album/the-return-of-magik

It has been a long and occasionally torturous wait for a new album by the Arkansas mystics known as Rwake, but March this year will see the release of a vigorous new opus via Relapse Records titled The Return of Magik.

More evocative and beautifully haunting than past exploits, these six sprawling and elegantly crafted compositions pack more soul-stirring punch than most of you can probably muster, and pieces ala “You Swore We’d Always Be Together” and “With Stardust Flowers” ebb and flow with such grace and enticing power that it defies belief. Doom-soaked riffs and despairing vocals howl out in pain and fill the soul of the listener with a swirling sense of longing while the potent rhythm section consistently propels things forward. Why and how does it manage to sound so emotionally raw and earthly yet occult and otherworldly? Talk about contrasts in play. With its overwhelming depth and impressive sense of cohesion, this album is indeed akin to a spell and an inward journey that will surprise and enlighten you. It comes across as massive and epic but also introspective and intimate, and who else but Rwake could have pulled something like this off in such style and with as much conviction as this?

If Neurosis and Eyehategod at their most accessible had a jam with mourning Beloveth, this LP would be fucking it and yet that only takes us about halfway there. A sense of urgency still surrounds Rwake’s spiritually rich song material, and this record is utterly splendid, essential, and well-written. You need this one. Trust me on that.