Rwake: Xenoglossalgia: The Last Stage of Awareness

This album was actually recorded back in the 1990s. Since then, it has always had a bigger reputation than circulation. Rwake has gone on to become a doom band of no small reputation. Fans of the band will certainly want to listen to this early—and pretty rare—recording of what the band was doing in its earliest stages. What they'll discover is a record filled with themes taken from science fiction, complete with the most bizarre studio effects I've heard recently. To listen to this album is like being abducted by little green men, taken to their space ship, and experimented on in the worst ways imaginable. It's interesting mostly as an exercise in noise and as an experiment with recording an album on a grand scale. Still, I found it often too difficult to enjoy.

I'm sure this album has its fans; as a record of what Rwake was doing in their early 20s and as a record of what sheer trippyness sounds like, this may well be worth a listen. For me, I thought it was interesting and original in places but too long by half. The last track—almost forty-five minutes long—is something to endure, not to enjoy. Some of the vocal passages play with heavy metal tropes and—I suspect—poke fun at them. You know the stuff I'm talking about—mayhem, murder, destroying teenagers, and worshipping Satan. Some listeners will like it, but to me it was more interesting as an artifact, something odd and interesting from twenty years ago.

Track Listing:
1. Intro
2. Stairwell
3. Or Die
4. Xenoglossalgia
5. Nagarachi
6. Interlude
7. Calibos / So Fucking Tired

Added: March 14th 2015
Reviewer: Carl Sederholm
Score:
Related Link: Band Facebook Page
Hits: 1434
Language: english

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