The Profound Lore debut from Arkansas doom outfit Pallbearer is called Sorrow and Extinction, and it’s due out Feb. 21, 2012. I guess it was a couple weeks ago, as I started putting together the post for the 2011 readers poll, that I started thinking more about 2012 releases and what was to come, rather than looking back on the year that this one has been. And today, I got to hear this album from Pallbearer for the first time, and yesterday, I got to review the Orange Goblin record, and I feel like things are going to be pretty good going into next year.

What works most for me about “An Offering of Grief,” which is the track you can play above if you haven’t yet, is that it matches blow for blow with 40 Watt Sun as regards emotionality, but marries that side of doom with thickened, almost specifically American modern doom tonality. The spaced-out nooding after the 5:20 mark as well is bizarrely intricate, and it speaks to the individuality of the album as a whole, into which I’m looking forward to digging deeper.

That’s a while off, yet. This coming week, I’ll have reviews of the new live Rotor and several other albums, as well as new music from Lantlôs and (I hope) my interview with Eric Wagner, formerly of Trouble and currently of Blackfinger, as well as the returned Six Dumb Questions with German stoner rockers Wight, who, if you didn’t catch it yet, were also featured in the latest podcast, which went up yesterday. I downloaded the six-hour version today at work, and have been making my way through it ever since. So far, if I do say so myself, it rules.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, the Saint Vitus-centric interview with Tony Reed is definitely worth a look, and a special thanks to everyone who checked out and commented on the several live reviews this week and the 290 people so far who liked the Top 20 of 2011 post. I can’t wait to compile the results of everyone’s lists and get that up, but I guess we have a couple weeks. Thanks also to everyone who has submitted a list already. If you haven’t the link is above or in the sidebar.

Good stuff. Thanks for checking in this week, either way. Hope you have a great and safe weekend leading up to the holidays this coming week, and I hope to see you on the forum and back here Monday for more silliness.

Rest is the fifth and most realized Rwake (pronounced “wake”) album. It follows four years behind the band’s Relapse Records debut, Voices of Omens, and, like that album, was produced by the careful ears of Sanford Parker. That’s important to note because, as Rwake has stepped beyond their past work in so many ways across Rest‘s six tracks, there are still some consistencies of sound that work greatly to their benefit, and Parker‘s production is undeniably a big part of that.

But then, “big” seems to be the word all around when it comes to Rwake. The guitars of Kiffin Rogers and Kris “Gravy” Graves alternate between piercing leads and riffs that seem to be made of block cement, broken through only by Jeff Morgan‘s ultra-adaptable drums, Reid Raley‘s rumble and the dual-vocal assault of Brittany Fugate‘s snarled screams and CT‘s shouts echoing over the abyss like cliffside incantations yelled to gathering clouds.

As the frontman, CT has shown marked growth in his vocals, moving beyond the screams of Voices of Omens and earlier records like 2004′s If You Walk Before You Crawl, You Crawl Before You Die and 2002′s Hell is a Door to the Sun (reissued earlier this year by Relapse) to more controlled and overall cleaner shouting. It’s not exactly melodic, and he’s still able to match Fugate for ferocity on cuts like “An Invisible Thread,” but there’s no question that in the four years between Voices of Omens and Rest, he came into his own as a singer and as a central figure in the band.

The album is 53 minutes long. My interview with CT was 55. We spoke before the band’s short tour at the end of last month about the strange and protracted process by which Rest was recorded and how it ultimately helped in undertaking the aforementioned maturation, the move to longer songs, their current position as regards touring and much more, and even had some time at the end to bring in how he — as the director of the sludge documentary Slow Southern Steel — views Rwake within the expansive creative milieu of the American south.

You’ll find the complete 6,200-word Q&A after the jump. Please enjoy.

Talk a little bit about the time between Voices of Omens and Rest. I know you toured, and did Slow Southern Steel, but tell me about going from one album to the other.

Well, it has been forever, but honestly, the first two years, we were still touring off of Voices, pretty much. It’s hard for us to really get into anything else when we’re focusing on that kind of stuff. We usually don’t mess around with writing or anything. After about two years – that’s kind of around the exact same time I started messing around with the movie – and Jeff had gotten really back into work where he was working, at this distribution center/huge warehouse thing. I would say around that two-and-a-half-year period, we definitely started to get lost again (laughs). And our bass player, Reid, had left the band, so we’d gotten another bass player, so we were teaching him all those songs during that. But then, right in the middle of that, that’s when we started writing all together. We were teaching him, and then at the same time, we started writing, so it worked out perfect that way. We were playing fests, recouping on all that, just getting back into the game. We played the Scion fest, and did a round of those first Shrinebuilder shows, and right after that, played Hellfest and went back to Europe again. In between all that, we had recorded the album, probably about a year ago. Half of it. About a year and a half ago. Then, like a year later, went back and finished the rest of it. Even working on the album has been like the last year and a half, so… We just kind of took our time and spread everything out, you know? Especially writing songs. We would write ‘em, then take parts out, add stuff to ‘em, stuff like that.

Was that something you specifically wanted to do after Voices of Omens? Did that album feel rushed to you?

No, it didn’t feel rushed. It actually felt perfect. Those songs came out really smooth, and the recording was definitely not rushed. It was just something we were doing. We were just focusing a lot more on the songwriting. We knew we wanted bigger songs this time around. We knew we wanted them to be very epic. We knew we wanted the songs to be like twice the size of the other songs. It’s something we’d been talking about, and it’s something that – even when you talk about it that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen when you write the song, you make some choices. We don’t ignore it. If something sounds bad, we won’t do it. But the fluidity of the songs – it flowed really natural, and we kind of knew what they were going to turn into. The other songs were shorter, and when they were done, we just focused on getting them tight, but these were way different. These songs are definitely different than anything we’ve written. I think it had a lot to do with us taking our time with them.

What was behind wanting to make the songs longer?

Honestly, we just talked about it, because we wanted a concept without having a concept. We wanted the songs to sound like they’re their own concept, even if no one knew there was a concept behind it. We knew we wanted them to be massive, like a rock opera song (laughs). Something really huge. But even just wanting that, it doesn’t mean it’s gonna end up that way. But it did mean that this time, because the songs just kept going. It felt good. There would be times we’d written a 15-minute song, and we thought it was only eight minutes. We were like, “There’s no way it’s this long,” and then we’d time it, and we were like, “Whoa,” because it was longer than we thought. That’s a good feeling, when you’ve written something and you don’t think it’s that long, just because – I don’t know why – there’s just so many changes in it and it goes by fast when you’re playing it, and you like it so much, I guess – and then you find out it’s way longer. I like that. That happened on every song, pretty much, on the album. We would honestly swear to ourselves they were way shorter, and then we’d time them and they were five minutes longer than we thought. We ended up trimming them down a lot, honestly. They were way longer than they are on the album.

And the recording process, breaking it up like that. Was it that drums and bass were done, then you went back later and did guitars and vocals, that kind of thing?

It was honestly – and we’d never done it like this – but all the guitars and drums were done first. They went in February of ’10, which was really good for me, because between then and January of ’11 and I already knew exactly what I was doing, I’d already taken those tracks and put my vocals on them at home. I was really comfortable with what was going on by that point. I was able to write lyrics and decide if it really fit it, or if it was supposed to go there. I enjoyed that a lot. I doubt we’d do it like that again, but it was easier for me that way (laughs). But yeah, then in January we went back and did everything else. All the vocals, the Moog, the bass, and all the other little things, and mixed it down also.

Can you tell me about that process of fleshing the songs out? There’s a lot of, like you say, the Moog, and samples, and these ambient, spacey parts. When did that stuff come into play?

Usually afterwards. The vocals are like that, too. Me and B. will usually step back and let them – we’re there at practice – but we usually let them come up with the overall, the huge groundwork. The skeletons in the song. I write all the time. I have a million notebooks. But I don’t try to force everything I write onto a Rwake song. I usually like to have the structures, because I can start to work with a pattern that they’re working with and totally different lyrics will come out because of the way it feels, or something, and it’s the same thing with Brittany. She might be working on some kind of different sound going on with the Moog, but it might not fit the song, especially overall when they’re done with it. So we sit back and let them finish that stuff, and then usually, about the time right when they’re about done, that’s usually when we step in and start singing over it and start playing over it – unless it’s something very specific, like if we’ve written a part, and Jeff – Jeff writes a lot of our parts, the drummer. He’ll specifically say, “I wrote this, and in my mind, the Moog is doing this on top of it,” because it’ll be more of a quiet part of the song, and we go right away for it. We’ll look for that song and add it to that, just to create the picture in Jeff’s head, to see what he was trying to pull out of there and whatnot. The same thing with the vocals. The last song, “Was Only a Dream,” there’s a quiet part in it, and the vocals are real predominant, almost poetic or something, and Jeff right away when he wrote that – it’s guitars only, some drums – right away, he was like, “I want you to do something there. I want B. to do something there.” That was the reason he’d written the part. I don’t think I was gonna do something, and he was like, “No. I specifically want something there,” because he thought the part sounded empty without it. So yeah, right then, I just instantly started throwing poetry over the part, just to paint a picture. We usually, honestly, step back and let the boys (laughs) do what they’re gonna do. To me, it’s so hard to write songs and do what they’re doing. Not that we’re special, but I don’t write that stuff, so I would think it’s hard anyway. If I was screaming on top of it and trying to learn a song, that would be a headache, so we usually try and wait till the end.

So do you feel like you benefitted from the extra time you had to focus over those basic tracks?

I wish I could do that all the time. It was so helpful. Every time, on all the albums, I always double my voice, my tracks. I double them up. This time I didn’t do it. Not on even one word. I didn’t double it one bit. And it was because of that. I felt so comfortable with what I’d been doing that I knew I wanted to go that route this time, because I’d never done it. But I just knew it. I felt comfortable. We had so much time to work on it. I just talked to B. and said, “Anything I’d double, instead of me doubling it, I want you to sing it with me,” and loved that, of course. Usually, when we’re in the studio, it’s almost like us working on it for the first time. Even though we’ve sang the songs live before we’ve taken ‘em there, it’s still not like being able to dissect something or hear something the way it is when you’re in the studio. Every time I’ve been in the studio, I usually lay a track down, and then lay another one down, and Sanford loves it. He’s always very honest with what he likes about us and what we should focus on or whatnot. He’s always really honest with us about everything, and he’s always been open about me doing that. I called him up ahead of time and told him, “I only wanna do one vocal track, and me and Brittany have worked on this specifically. We know what we want to do together,” and he loved it. And usually, he works the hardest on doing those double tracks, making sure that it’s always perfect. The same with the guitars. He spent so much time on the guitars. He liked it both ways, is what I’m trying to say. I came in and said I was only doing one track, and he was like, “Yes! Let’s do it,” where I thought he might be against it, thinking, “That sounds so awesome on the other albums, don’t stray from it.” But he was really open to it, and he made it that awesome. It was real comfortable, doing that. Especially Brittany doing that also. It helped so much. Like I said, I really don’t see us doing that again (laughs), but it would help.

That wait must have been a little frustrating too, though. That’s a full year.

Yes. It was a full year. But that was only because, I would say, the first bit of the year, Sanford was busy and he couldn’t get to us. Also, Reid, right at that time, had gotten back into the band, and he didn’t know any of the songs. He couldn’t have went to the studio anyway, because he didn’t know any of the songs, so we had to pretty much go that route, and say, after about six months, when Reid got the songs down, well then Sanford is booked up for five months or something. It worked out that way, and yeah, it was very frustrating. It was very frustrating (laughs).

I’d guess the extra time is part of this, but it seems like your vocals really developed a lot between Voices of Omens and Rest.

In between the last two Rwake albums, I’ve been in about five or six bands other than Rwake (laughs). Just locally, for the fun of it-type things. I’ve really purposely tried to do vocals that didn’t sound like Rwake. Here, recently, like in the last year and a half or two years, I joined more of a hard rock band, and the guitar player of the band – it’s called Iron Tongue – the guitar player has his own studio, so I’ve just been going in there. That’s where I first decided – I doubled my vocals on the first tracks for that band, and I hated it. It just didn’t work. It was more a hard rock thing. I started just doing the single vocals there, and honestly, I would say that helped a lot, singing in that band for the past two years. Because it’s not the same as screaming, just yelling as hard as you can. It’s a lot different. I’ve went up on stage for them trashed and not been able to sing as well. It’s totally different (laughs). You have to concentrate more – I have to, to sing and not sing off key – as opposed to just screaming all the time. Just going in and working with that dude in the studio a lot, I think, really helped develop the vocals. That’s where I got the original idea, that I was like, “Well you know what? I wanna only do one track, and I feel way confident about it,” and that’s just working with this guy so much. I’ve been in the studio all my life, but our band owns the studio, so it’s like we’re just constantly making demos all the time and working on stuff like that. You hear yourself so much more clear in the studio. If you’re messing up, you hear it, is what I’m saying. It’s a lot more predominant, to hear your mess-ups. I would say that – just playing with that band a lot – has helped that a lot. It’s not like I took that style over into Rwake, I just think that it helped me grow all around, vocal-wise. It made me way more confident, even in Rwake, just what I was doing and what I wanted to do. Even the stuff that’s different on the new Rwake album, I felt like now was the time. And I feel like that also has a lot to do with the songwriting too, the kind of songs that came out on the new album, I was like, “I wanna sing like this,” or “I wanna do this on there.” I’m not trying to say it’s so much more original than the last albums or anything, but the feelings are conveyed a lot different. To me, when I hear those songs, the personal feelings coming out either from the players, the musicians in the band, it’s way different from the last album. It’s a completely different vibe. I think that helps a lot to what came out of me could go on there.

At what point did Reid come back in? Had the recording already started there?

Yeah. That was kind of like the straw with it. Our bassist. We hadn’t really decided he was in the band, but he was a really good buddy of ours, and he had learned all the old songs, and he’d even learned a couple of the new songs, just because we were playing them live, but Jeff had not really – I keep saying Jeff just because he’s very much an overlord of the band – he puts so much into it, it’s his band almost, so his vote counts for double as the rest of our votes (laughs). We could tell he just wasn’t comfortable with moving forward with Alan, our buddy. Reid was actually, at the time, playing in Iron Tongue, the rock band that I was in. We needed a bass player, and Reid joined Iron Tongue. So Reid was around a lot at this point in time, and it wasn’t even so much that Jeff was like, “Oh, we gotta get Reid back in the band,” or this, that and the other, he just knew that it would work. He was like, “Well, I know if Reid could learn these songs, he can play on the album, it’ll work,” because of what we’d been dealing with all the rest of the year. Reid quit the band right before If You Walk Before You Crawl came out, and when he did, we wrote all the songs without him. And then he joined the band right before we were gonna go record the album. That’s kind of the same thing this was. He quit the band, and then got back in the band right after we went into the studio the first time, when we just went to do the guitars. But I don’t know if he learned any of those songs until the summer or something like that. That’s what we spent the whole summer doing, just learning the new material for him to get down, so we could figure out how to get into the studio (laughs). He was out of the band a year, year and a half, and after he got the songs down, about six or seven months later, that’s when Sanford didn’t have time for like three more months or something, so we just waited for him to have the time for us to get our asses up in there.

Will Reid tour with the band?

Right now he’s not. He lives in Cincinnati, and that’s kind of the whole thing. He lives there. We’re a smaller band. We put a lot of our own stuff into it, so for Reid to get back with us, we have to pay for him to come down here, you know, and we’re just not gonna do that. We don’t have the money, for one, and yeah. He doesn’t have the money to get down here, so I think he’s kind of marooned in Cincinnati living with his folks right now. He said he was gonna move here three weeks ago, but it didn’t happen, and he said he was doing the tour. The bass player that we have, John [Judkins], Reid picked him out. Reid was like, “Let’s get John to do this because I’m in Cincinnati.” Reid’s baby was being born when we did our European tour, like the third day in the tour, so he was like, “I can’t do this, let’s find someone that can do it,” and we found John. He had lived in Cincinnati at this time, but at the time, he was like, “I’m moving back” and all this, but it honestly looks like he’s not moving back (laughs). We really don’t know what’s going on, because we sense he wants to do the tour that we’re doing coming up, but we’re really sticklers to stuff like band practice, and we’re like, if he can’t get down here to have band practice, then he can’t really do the tour. It kind of leaves it at that until he moves back home.

I know you guys are doing the run of dates in a week.

Not much, really. That’s kind of where we’re at. We’re not really doing much these days. We’ve all got so many kids now and we’ve already come to a point where we’ve turned down so many good shows and tours, that it’s not really a big deal anymore when some awesome band is like – I mean, we turned down a lot of really good tours. We know what we’re gonna do. We know what our focus is, and it’s not getting out there and touring like maniacs. We just can’t do that anymore. We just try to focus on making the shows that we do the best shows possible, so that people really get what they want. When we play now, it’s a lot more people driving to come see. Even though we play this town, there’s people driving from the states that surround it, just because they know we’re not coming there. They know we’re not going to go on tour there, and so our shows have gotten a little bit bigger in that aspect, just from the more diehard fans. It’s not like they’ve grown hundreds and hundreds of more people, but the few people that really, really were cult-like fans of ours, they just all drive over to come see us now. That’s how it is. We’ll probably tour Europe anytime we get the chance, because that’s almost like starting over again, playing towns that never got the chance to see us, where we’ve toured over here a lot, so I’m not saying it’s not a big deal, it is a big deal – I would love to tour – but there’s no reason in being mad about the fact that we can’t do this, just because we can’t. It’s kind of like Neurosis. They never tour. They just fly out, they do this, they get back home. That’s kind of where we’re at. We’ve figured out how we can do little patches of tours, like we’re doing in a couple weeks. We’ve figured out how we can do that a bunch and we just have to stick to that plan. We’re not really out there trying to be rock stars (laughs). We’re not trying to do that. Lots of people want us to do stuff and we don’t do it, and if we don’t do stuff because we personally can’t, at least it’s cool that we can’t do it for that reason instead of not doing it because no one wants us. It’s at least good to know that everyone wants us to come, we just don’t do it, we can’t do it, so when it comes to a point that we can do it, we know that people will want us more. As opposed to playing the same town four times that year, or something like that. I see people not getting tired of us this way. They appreciate us a lot more this way too.

It’s funny you mentioned Neurosis. I was thinking the same thing.

We don’t do it on purpose like that, but when we see how they do – because we definitely don’t find ourselves at the level that they are. They’ve earned the right to do that (laughs). But, us, we just kind of have to do that. It’s where we’re at right now. It’s not even about the jobs as much as it is about the family. Jeff and Brittany, in the band, they have a kid together. They have another one on the way. Brittany’s about to have a kid in February, so she’s pregnant as fuck right now. When we do these shows in September, that’ll be it until March so Brittany can rest her pregnant ass (laughs). That’s all there is to it. Gravy, our lead guitarist, he’s got like four kids. He’s got four kids and a wife that doesn’t work, so Gravy is the family. He brings everything in. So for him to fucking take a break and do Rwake – which you don’t get paid for – we’re not, again, rock stars. And we’re not even a little bit of rock stars. When we go out, we don’t get paid for it. And even if we made a lot of money, it would be going into something that’s not our pockets, and if it was, we would figure out a way to do this more, because it would help out the family more that way. But it’s not. We pay for our food and that’s it. We get a daily per diem, and then they feed us at the club, and that’s what we get out of it, besides getting to play. There might be a fan at the end of the night that, if you’re into it, gives you pills or something, but that’s not really what it’s about. You’re not out there to get free food and some free drugs every once in a while. That’s not a reason to put your family on hold. Any time we do it, you can rest assured that we only do it because we love it. There’s never a time where you’ll hear Rwake say, “Oh, we’re gonna do this because we need the money,” or “Hey, let’s do this one-off gig in this town because they’ll pay us a lot. We can get a good cut from it.” That’s not in our mentality or vocabulary whatsoever. If we’re playing your town, it’s because we’re playing this music that we love, and we want to be in a cheerful mood about it. We’ll be in a very good mood about it, because we’re happy to be there. It’s not like we’ll be there and be in shitty moods because we have to be there, like it’s a job. Because it’s not a job. We all have jobs, and they suck (laughs). We work for a living, and it fucking puts a toll on us. And so, to get out and to play music for anybody who appreciates it, that’s the only reason we do it. That’s the only reason we do it whatsoever. That’s why I appreciate any fan or friend or whatever taking the time to come see us. Taking off work. Some people that don’t work for a living, they don’t understand that. There are people out there with free rides, and they don’t understand that for people that work, you might have to just ask off work that night to go see the band that you like. In return, that’s a whole day of not getting paid. And that affects your whole entire life. Like The Body, who’s an Arkansas band, when they play here, there’s never been a time that I’ve missed them, and I missed them because I’m so broke right now. And it sucks. And there’s some people that don’t work and just get to get up and go see The Body. That might have a fucking trust fund, or they’ve got parents giving them money. More people to people like that, because those same people come to our shows also, and whatever. I’m just saying that Rwake is not like that, and I think we appreciate playing and getting to play for anyone who likes us so much more because – it sucks that we’re not at work and we’re losing money, but at the same time, we’re like, “Wow! We’re not at work! We’re out here and we’re getting to do what we love.” Gravy especially. As soon as he gets on the road, the first thing you hear from him is, “I haven’t had a day off in three weeks.” That’s the first thing that comes out of his mouth, and then the second thing is, “I’ve had kids crawling on my body and pulling on my hair. All I wanna do is come home, sit in my recliner and fall asleep” (laughs). And so when you see him on stage, playing a solo, even just doing a bend, man, I know where it’s coming from and I know how much he means it. I’ve played music with that dude since we were 15 years old. We’re like 36 now. So I know the guy inside out, and I know how much he means it and just how hard he works at life. Alone. To finally get up on stage and get to do what he was really born to do. I know I’ve said this over and over, but we really mean it and we really appreciate all of our fans. It’s hard work to do.

And at the same time, opportunities come up like doing the Maryland Deathfest next year, and people will be traveling for that, so you can still be seen.

Totally. That’s kind of what we’re basing a lot of the stuff around right now. You know, it’ll be smart to do festivals, because people are coming from all over, and we’re not playing all over, so it’s real smart to play this fest and let all these people from all over see us in one shot. Just because we can’t make it to those towns. We just can’t do it. And at the same time, we all have vacation time. For instance, we’re gonna tour around the Maryland Deathfest. It’ll only be like 10 days, but still, we’re gonna do it. That’ll be our East Coast run that we haven’t done in a few years. We’ll do it. We’re gonna figure out a way to hit the West Coast somehow. We’ve had lots of offers from friends to just fly out there. We could share gear and go down the coast with them, and the shows’ll pay for the tickets. You know what I’m saying? We’re not doing it for the money. But to play Roadburn or to play Maryland Deathfest, it really helps a band like us out that’s not able to tour as much.

Will you do Roadburn next year?

If they invite us, probably. I’ve been in touch with Walter, and I don’t know. He’s definitely said he wants to talk about it. He’s wanted to talk about maybe doing some special stuff, like playing Hell is a Door all the way through or something like that, in its entirety, and then maybe doing another set on a smaller stage, to do all the newer songs or whatnot. But at the same time, it’s not for sure. I’ve also been talking to Ben at Hellfest. I really want to play Hellfest again, just because we’ve got lots of friends in France and it’s really freaking hard to get a show in France for some reason. When we did our European tour, we skipped over France altogether, and it kind of sucked.

One last thing and then I’ll let you go. Doing Slow Southern Steel, and taking that time and taking a real look at the Southern scene and all those bands and that great legacy of music – did that give you any sense or appreciation for where Rwake sits in that?

Wow. That’s a good question. I would say I definitely found a new appreciation for the scene and all of the bands, but I never really thought of it like that, with Rwake. It’s hard to answer a question like that about myself, but I think it’s an awesome question, and to think about it, I didn’t, obviously, because I’m sitting here stuttering over my words. But even just thinking about it, just you bringing it up, I’m kind of thinking of it now (laughs), and it’s like, just seeing how we fit in it all. Honestly, we’re not in the movie one bit. I kind of purposely did that. I didn’t want people to think I was making a movie about myself, or that I was just trying to promote myself or something. So instead, when it came to Arkansas bands, I filmed Deadbird and a couple of the other bands who aren’t so big and whatnot. But that’s a hard question, just because I didn’t. I didn’t think of it like that with Rwake. The whole time I would interview people, even when I interviewed Phil [Anselmo], I never dropped my band name one time. It was never about that. And then finally, it somehow came up, and Mike Williams was there, and he laughed, and he was like, “Dude, Phil, if you could hear this guy’s band” – and he started talking up Rwake a whole bunch, saying things that I’ve never heard him say about us. That alone kind of makes me think we are right in all of that. Obviously, if Mike is sitting here saying good things about us to Phil Anselmo, who probably won’t even remember five minutes later, but still. That he would take the time to be like, “Oh, this guy’s band. You gotta hear this. We’re talking about all this, but this stuff’s different.” I could appreciate us in the middle of all that, especially because we’re very weird, with a Moog and a girl up there screaming also. I love it, and I love to represent it. Everyone knows that we represent very hard when we go out. We usually always have an Arkansas flag hung up behind us, because we don’t have a Rwake banner or anything like that. We always just put an Arkansas flag up. Like I said, it’s hard for me to talk about myself in that aspect, especially with the movie, but I definitely see Rwake off in there. We’re off in there more or just as much as any other band, obviously, or I wouldn’t have wanted to step up and make the film. The Southern scene of this kind of heavy music or crust – it’s not like it’s even a metal scene, because most of these people grew up listening to more punk than I did. It’s just that they ended up doing so many drugs that they ended up getting way louder amps and playing more like Black Sabbath than Black Flag. Mixed in with all of us together and even seeing Rwake in it, I do see us in there. It’s a family, for sure. It would be hard for me to not see Rwake mixed up in all that. Like I said, the reason I made the film – I got the idea from a guy that was writing a book with the same title – but my thesis with the film was because every interview I ever did, when the journalist or the writer would say, “Well, what is it about the South?” That was the basic question. They would say, “Everyone, Rwake, and Weedeater and all these bands, and it’s from the South. What is it about the South that makes bands like Rwake or Weedeater?” That was the question. So, for me, it was like, I’m gonna answer that question with this movie. I want people to watch this movie and say, “That’s what it is about the South that makes Rwake the band they are.” Because obviously they’re not saying, “What is it about your personal psyche that makes Rwake?” It’s about the fact that we grew up, our own personal gut feelings as much – it’s the Southern-ness of it they all want to know. “What is it about the reality of your surroundings? What is it about that that is making this music?” Because everyone is saying that it has something to do with the music, and we all claim it so hard. I couldn’t even tell you what it is about the South, but it’s the same answer you’ll get from anyone: You just have to live here. You just have to live here and know it. I can’t really tell you. You just have to be stuck here for a year and you’ll know it, you know? I hoped to answer that with the film, and that again, just by doing all that – Rwake is embedded in this scene. We love it. We love all of our brothers that are in bands, especially that aren’t from the South. We have more in common with a band like Meatjack than with some of the bands from the South, but it’s still different down here. We all know what we’re talking about when we can go into a certain subject, like shopping at WalMart. There’s lots of subjects that we can get into that no one else would even think is funny, or they wouldn’t know what we were talking about. It’s definitely a thread that makes us family like that, being in the south.

You mentioned WalMart. I heard a statistic yesterday that at any given second in the United States, there are 850,000 people in WalMarts around the country.

Oh, it’s sick. It’s sick, man. WalMart is the devil. This is really funny. Someone just showed me the other day: There’s a “Pictures at WalMart” site.

People of WalMart.

That’s what it is. Just go there and type “Alabama.” Type “Mississippi.” If you want to see the best pictures, just find these places in the South (laughs). It’s like nothing you will ever see. It’ll blow your mind. The friend that showed me this kept typing in all this stuff, and I was like, “You’re totally missing it. Type in ‘Birmingham, Alabama’ and see what comes up.” Type in “Mississippi.” Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama (laughs). It’s the epitome of that stuff. I’ve heard people from Virginia be like, “Oh, Arkansas isn’t the South.” I’m like, “Man, we are the lost” (laughs). We’re the non-claimed – that’s how much of the South we are. It’s extreme. Those states. Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. Man. I’m trying to think of an even worse word than “inbred.” It’s worse than that. It’s worse than “backwoods.” It’s like a whole other redneck slang for it (laughs). It’s messed up. That whole little belt, which is also the fucking strongest part of the Bible belt. It’s a sick, hard land here. It’s definitely hard. Hard livin’.

Rwake on Thee Facebooks

Relapse Records

In light of CT having helmed the documentary film Slow Southern Steel, it’s hard not to read Rest in terms of its place in the lineage of Southern American sludge, and in that regard, it builds on the directives of the genre – at times it is painfully slow – but shies away neither from exploration nor melody in the guitar work of Kiffin Rogers and Kris “Gravy” Graves. Rounded out by Jeff Morgan’s drums and Nachtmystium contributor Reid Raley‘s bass (John Judkins has also recently toured with the band in the role), Rwake don’t entirely transcend rudimentary sludge’s punk-based aggression – they’re not trying to – but in terms of where these songs go, it’s clear the band are reaching for something more complex. They get it almost instantly, the acoustic guitar and melodic vocals from Fugate in the intro “Souls of the Sky” giving way after 1:27 to the near-12-minute ultra-downer “It was Beautiful but Now it’s Sour.” The opener, like the later “Ti Progetto,” being geared more toward atmosphere and establishing a context for what’s coming, Rest truly gets underway with the second cut, a lumbering pace set by Morgan’s snare and topped with one of the album’s several excellent guitar leads. CT’s first vocals, interestingly, are backwards. It’s a tactic Rwake use toward the end of the song as well, but his gruff shouts are soon turned forward and paired with Fugate’s animalistic black metal snarl. But 3:20 into the total 11:45, Rwake’s expanse is beginning to lay itself out. CT and Fugate synchronize and the effect is engrossing.

Like much of Rest, “It was Beautiful but Now it’s Sour” follows a linear structure, but though there are moments where it feels like their build will just keep going without payoff, Rwake never lose sight of the song they’re writing. I’d argue that the ambient/acoustic break that comes into “It was Beautiful but Now it’s Sour” – one of CT’s most Neurosis-esque moments in terms of delivery – undercuts the apex the prior movement was leading toward, but it doesn’t feel like Rwake are making a misstep in their craft as much as making their listeners sweat out the track’s peak. Instead, melodic guitar lines space out patiently before a crashing avalanche of a riff takes hold and, eventually Morgan introduces a quicker tempo with drum fills while Fugate screams deep in the mix, nonetheless stepping back as CT helms the drama of the final minute. There’s a lot happening right away, and though shorter at nine minutes, “An Invisible Thread” doesn’t let up, beginning faster with electric and acoustic (I think) guitars paired in Mastodonian tradition for a quicker riff as CT and Fugate once again line up as well. Much of Rest’s success is based around the two pairings – Rogers and Graves and CT and Fugate (with the Raley‘s bass and Morgan’s drumming for ground) – and all are working excellently on “An Invisible Thread.” The song doesn’t have the same kind of outward movement as “It was Beautiful but Now it’s Sour,” but the intensity of the first half finds release in the slow riffing and Slayeresque lead-line/ride cymbal interplay that mounts the second. It’s horrific in how huge it sounds, but here too Rwake are in control, and the rumbling noise with which the song ends is suitable aftermath for the low-end apocalypse the song preceding has wrought.

The album finds its centerpiece in “The Culling,” a 16-minute beast that seeks to meld the intensity of “An Invisible Thread” with the experimental edge Rwake brought to “It was Beautiful but Now it’s Sour,” launching its quest with a sample of Arch Oboler beginning a Lights Out radio show with the signature, “It… is… later… than… you… think…” The ominous implications are made all the more visceral by the radio fizzle and tolling bell behind, but Rwake have a while to go before they show just how late it is. For its first six minutes, “The Culling” gradually develops a build that starts on guitar and slowly grows to encompass noise, the other guitar, bass and drums before CT and Fugate kick in on vocals following the heavier guitars at 6:52. The lull in the song’s opening could almost have been its own track, but the hypnotic aspects of the first movement get brutal counterpoint in what follows, Morgan giving a performance on drums that’s not just versatile but fluid and tailored complement to the song’s high point – which as righteous and dominating as CT and Fugate’s vocals are – comes with the guitar solos that swirl into the mix starting at 11:16. It’s an oddly classic metal move to have these leads as the crowning section of the song and, by extension, the album, but Rogers and Graves make it work completely, settling eventually into the agonizingly paced finale, which finds CT shouting into an echoing abyss and Fugate at her most vicious. “The Culling” epitomizes the achievement Rwake have made with Rest, and in that way is the highlight, but the whole record shimmers with a sense of morose grandeur.

Rwake allow listeners to comprehend that feeling with the minute-long interlude “Ti Progetto,” which features a gospel-esque reading from Arthur C. Clarke’s foreword to 2001: A Space Odyssey that flows directly into closer “Was Only a Dream.” Based more around a repeated and well-constructed lead line than a riff in the traditional rhythmic sense, “Was Only a Dream” is probably Rwake’s most melodically potent inclusion on Rest, but there’s still plenty of room in the 13:51 runtime for fury and pummel. Fugate takes lead vocal over an angular riff in the song’s first third, and is joined by CT soon for some of their most timely call and response, both affecting an emotional response to what seems both dire and desperate lyrically. Once again Rogers and Graves step in to offset with solos, and given how few parts have come up again on Rest once introduced, the return of the song’s original lead line to fade out is surprising and that much more a demonstration of Rwake’s ultimate sense of structure. “Was Only a Dream” fades out and, for all purposes, ends with about five minutes left, but acoustic guitar soon returns and CT tops this with his madman’s poetry, leading to triumphantly heavy guitar that leads Rwake to their titular rest at last. A final sampled speech – a reading of the Rudyard Kipling poem “If” – provides contemplative epilogue.

It’s not perfect. In listening, one gets the sense that there are dynamics in some of these songs – “Was Only a Dream” as well as “The Culling” particularly – that are lost in sacrifice to Rwake’s low-end devotion, and there are times where the experimental side of Rest takes away from the impact of its songs, but Rest is an easy album to be excited about for its many and varied successes. Even without counting CT’s aforementioned excursion into cinema, it’s clear the band spent their time wisely over the last four and a half years, and what’s more, were able to translate their growth into a mature and wonderfully heavy-footed musical lumber. There will be those who won’t follow where Rest wants to go, either for the abrasive elements the band brings to the table or for the patience and several listens some of this material requires. Given those caveats, however, Rwake have just unleashed one of 2011’s finest collections and set a new bar for themselves creatively. The spaces they occupy on Rest are terrifying and beautiful – sometimes at once – and should thrust Rwake into the upper realms of at-large sludge and doom consciousness.

Rwake on Thee Facebooks

Relapse Records

Voices of Omens delved into apocalyptic metal territory, no doubt about it, but Rest personalizes that process. It makes it human. Sonically, the six tracks encompass a range of extreme genres, from doom to black and death metal to the dirge-hued bombast Rwake have come to trade on over the course of their development. The songs (with the use of a couple choice samples) hit hard enough to satisfy longtime followers of the band, and the expansive scope comes at no cost to that heaviness.

Relapse has been kind enough to let The Obelisk have a couple choice track premieres over the last several months (Hail!Hornet, Indian, the entirety of Rwake‘s reissue of 2002′s Hell is a Door to the Sun), but I don’t know if I’ve been as excited about any of them as I am about this. As you listen, understand that you’re getting a part of the whole here and that each cut on Rest offers something individual to the listener.

Please find “An Invisible Thread” on the player below — followed by an explanation of the track and lyrics from frontman CT — and enjoy.

From CT:
“An Invisible Thread” is an anthemic song about the devil’s music, wife abuse, dreamscapes, and the ability to ”out of body experience” your very own suicide. It is the “upper” on the album. Not so much uplifting, just more of an all around upper.

Lyrics:
nothing last forever un relived
when all the others give and fucking take
user suck the life to fucking live
imitate life but never recreate

if we knew there would be no fit
if you think you know then you’re fucking full of shit
look around you and embrace it
the long road to hell with no regret

now you feel it cause you’re sick at your stomach
it’s a feeling that no one can run from
it’s a haunting and the sickness is the demon
exorcise through suicide and reason

Rest is available for preorder at this location in 180 gram vinyl, CD or t-shirt bundles, and will be released Sept. 27. Special thanks to Relapse for permission to host the stream.

Vocalist CT from Arkansas post-sludge outfit Rwake‘s chronicling of the Southern US heavy underground, Slow Southern Steel, will be making its yankee premiere in Brooklyn next weekend at the Knitting Factory on Aug. 13. This, I admit, is old news, so consider this post a reminder or just a note for anyone who might not have seen it the first time. The vigilant souls over at BrooklynVegan are hosting the event, and will be responsible for the carnage that ensues once the free Jager is gone and the kickass doom begins.

Here’s some info copped from the aforementioned:

BrooklynVegan is proud to announce that we will host the exclusive Northeastern screening of Slow Southern Steel at Knitting Factory on Aug. 13! The screening, which will take place at 10PM, will feature FREE Jagermeister (for a limited time) as well as an appearance from the director CT. Then following the film, Knitting Factory will host performances from some of our favorite doom-y bands The Gates of Slumber, Cough, and Earthling. Tickets are on sale (admission includes the movie and the show).

More details here, and here’s a trailer for the film in case you’re not stoked enough for it:

Relapse Records is set to reissue Hell is a Door to the Sun next week, with a new mix from the ever-present and (why not?) effervescent Sanford Parker, a remaster job and artwork that does the disturbing sounds justice. If, like me, you came aboard the good ship Rwake with 2004′s If You Walk Before You Crawl, You Crawl Before You Die, or after, you really should hear this:

Rwake‘s Hell is a Door to the Sun will be out on Relapse March 1, 2011. More info and pre-orders here.

Pushing sludge into the angrier, extreme metal territory might not be everyone’s thing, and I’m pretty sure they’re not the first ones to do it, but the fact remains that this is how genres grow. Napalm Christ‘s “The Seasons of Dirt,” apparently instrumental until recently, is formative, to be sure, but there aren’t many bands out there transgressing these stylistic lines. Whatever hype follows them because of their alliances, I hear a lot of sludge, and not a lot of it sounds like this.

aOT010

I set myself a couple rules for this one: No farther west than Texas, nothing north of Virginia and if a band features members of Down, they’re out. That means no Crowbar, no C.O.C., no Eyehategod or any of their other offshoots. Those are great bands, don’t get me wrong, but you get into that territory and next thing you know the whole podcast is full — ditto had I included Maryland — and I think once you take a look at the tracklist, you’ll see I was aiming for something else entirely.

When the idea was originally suggested, it was an exploration of the new Southern metal, bands like Baroness and their post-Mastodon Southern prog ilk. Later it was expanded to include a wide breadth of Southern rock and metal old and new. Well, the first was a little too narrowly focused (there just aren’t 30 bands — yet — playing Masto-prog), and the second was a little too wide ranging, so I took a middle course between them. You still get the bands like Baroness, Torche, Mastodon, and Zoroaster, and you also get some more straightforward rock-type stuff from the likes of Texas acts SuperHeavyGoatAss, Amplified Heat and Orthodox Fuzz.

I’m pretty sure you’ll agree it’s a killer mix of bands, and that it covers a wide ground, from the humid sludge of Sourvein and Ol’ Scratch, to the wide-eyed psych bliss of Tasha-Yar. All but one of the included tracks are from the latter half of the last decade (I’d argue the song from 2004 and the album from which it came were a big inspiration for many of the other bands present), and that was definitely on purpose, since this is a vibrant scene happening right now. I tried to be as timely with it as I could.

In that spirit, you’ll find new music included from Torche, Kylesa (finally found Spiral Shadow at an FYE; let the record show I tried two legitimate indie stores first), Elliott’s Keep, US Christmas, Kin of Ettins, Orthodox Fuzz and The Crimson Electric. To honor readers Josh and Jason who first presented and then expanded the idea, we start off with Weedeater, who are possibly the most Southern band on the planet.

Click here or the image above to get the file, or stream it on the player above. Full tracklist with timestamps and years of release is after the jump. I hope you enjoy it.

0:00:06-0:04:30 Weedeater, “God Luck and Good Speed” from God Luck and Good Speed (Southern Lord, 2007)

0:04:30-0:09:22 Ol’ Scratch, “Redneck Deity” from The Sunless Citadel (OSSR, 2009)

0:09:22-0:14:54 Zoroaster, “Odyssey” from Matador (E1, 2010)

0:14:54-0:19:32 Karma to Burn, “Forty-Three” from Appalachian Incantation (Napalm, 2010)

0:19:32-0:24:02 The Crimson Electric, “Three Day Bender” from Shake the Dead/Three Day Bender (Self-released, 2010)

0:24:02-0:28:01 Sourvein, “Imperial Bastard” from Imperial Bastard (Candlelight, 2008)

0:28:01-0:31:04 Black Skies, “Nomad” from Hexagon (I’m Better Than Everyone, 2009)

0:31:04-0:37:07 Torche, “Out Again” from Songs for Singles (Hydra Head, 2010)

0:37:07-0:46:05 Ketea, “Alchemystery” from Alpha (Self-released, 2009)

0:46:05-0:49:41 Orthodox Fuzz, “Black Goat” from Various Artists, Cowbells and Cobwebs (Planetfuzz, 2010)

0:49:41-0:53:48 SuperHeavyGoatAss, “Ice” from Nemesis (Arclight, 2008)

0:53:48-0:58:03 Kin of Ettins, “Snake Den Time” from Doomed in Dallas (Red Hare, 2010)

0:58:03-1:03:44 Valkyrie, “False Dreams” from Man of Two Visions (Noble Origin, 2008)

1:03:44-1:09:40 Hail!Hornet, “He Who Walks behind the Rose Bros.” from Hail!Hornet (Dwell, 2007)

1:09:40-1:23:10 Mastodon, “Hearts Alive” from Leviathan (Relapse, 2004)

1:23:10-1:26:47 Stinking Lizaveta, “Zeitgeist, the Movie” from Sacrifice and Bliss (At a Loss, 2009)

1:26:47-1:30:47 Throttlerod, “Beggar’s Blanket” from Pig Charmer (Small Stone, 2009)

1:30:47-1:36:45 Caltrop, “Dr. Motherfucker” from Caltrop (Self-released, 2006)

1:36:45-1:43:06 Mala Suerte, “The Monks of Medmenham” from The Shadow Tradition (Illwill, 2009)

1:43:06-1:50:48 US Christmas, “Deep Green” from Run Thick in the Night (Neurot, 2010)

1:50:48-1:55:01 Baroness, “Jake Leg” from Blue Record (Relapse, 2009)

1:55:01-1:59:07 Lord, “Master of Custodial Arts” from Under the Sign of the Maker’s Mark (Self-released, 2006)

1:59:07-2:04:56 Gritter, “Deep Roller” from Sour Mash and Spanish Moss (Self-released, 2010)

2:04:56-2:11:23 Cough, “288 Years of Sin” from Sigillum Luciferi (Forcefield, 2008)

2:11:23-2:19:07 Elliott’s Keep, “Shades of Disgrace” featuring John Perez, from Sine Qua Non (Brainticket, 2010)

2:19:07-2:26:20 Rwake, “Leviticus” from Voices of Omens (Relapse, 2007)

2:26:20-2:34:44 Deadbird, “The Riverbed” from Twilight Ritual (At a Loss, 2008)

2:34:44-2:38:42 Kylesa, “Distance Closing In” from Spiral Shadow (Season of Mist, 2010)

2:38:42-2:49:56 Tasha-Yar, “An Unobstructed Door” from First Landing (Underwater Analog Colonies, 2010)

2:49:56-2:52:45 Amplified Heat, “Amplified Boogie” from How Do You Like the Sound of That (Arclight, 2007)

Click Here to Download audiObelisk Transmission 010

Sludge heathens Deadbird — whose last full-length Twilight Ritual was also released in 2008 by At a Loss — contribute one brutal track filled with the patented tempo changes and somber, regret-filled lyrics one would expect. Rabid screams and tempos mesh with oppressive doom and hardcore-esque sing along anthems together in a way few bands make work.

Burned Up Bled Dry‘s side of the split offers up four tracks of fast, crusty powerviolence and punk/hardcore rage. This is the first material to be released from the brutal late-‘90s act who brought BUBD back to life in 2005 after a six year hiatus. Bulging with views of hate and hopelessness for today’s society, these tracks shall serve as your anthem for anger.

A full-color cover wraps all the way around the seven inch to unfold for an extended apocalyptic landscape, with a layout by Amjad Faur (Storm the Castle). All copies of the 7” will be pressed on various shades and colors of high-quality, opaque vinyl.

Tracklisting:

Deadbird
1. “Sickness and Conviction”

Burned Up Bled Dry
1. “Punches Thrown”
2. “My Way to Hate”
3. “The New Reality of Distance”
4. “Something’s Missing”