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Rwake

Hell Is A Door To The Sun (Reissue)

Written by: PP on 06/05/2011 03:40:15

Sludge metallers Rwake had one thing going on their previous album "Voices Of Omens", and that was a discernible feeling of ugliness and hatred of religion throughout. That thick layer of disgusting sludge didn't make for very good songs though, which is also very much a problem on their 2002 album "Hell Is A Door To The Sun", which has been reissued by Relapse this year.

Most songs reach far beyond the six-minute mark, and offer little more than down-tempo riffs that go nowhere, whose only purpose is to distort the reality of the listener through a dense, unforgiving sound of sludgy brutality. Sure, there's a feeling of progression and structure to the songs, but it's ruined by guttural growls, thick screams and other nonsensical stuff that seems to have been just smacked carelessly on top of the music without much thought to how the dynamics between the two might play together. You might argue I'm being too harsh, but having spent 10+ listens to the record over the past two weeks, I'm still having trouble identifying a single part, passage or idea from the record, because everything blends together into one gray mass of sludgy groove. Lets be honest here, Rwake's best work was much later, and "Hell Is A Door To The Sun" is merely directed at the completionist collector.

Download: Anything will do
For the fans of: Cavity, Eyehategod, Unearthly Trance, Indian
Listen: Myspace

Release date 01.03.2011 (original release date in 2002)
Relapse