A band who don’t get enough credit. Rwake released the cumbersome-but-righteously-titled If You Walk Before You Crawl, You Crawl Before You Die in 2004 through At a Loss Recordings. Based in Little Rock, Arkansas, the six-piece outfit — six of ’em! — traveled to Chicago in March of that year to record for six days with Sanford Parker, who also mixed (John Brearley is credited with engineering as well; Alan Douches mastered), and what they went home with remains these 18 years later both monstrous and unlike nearly anything else that was coming out at the time. With discernable influences from the likes of Neurosis and Buzzov*en, two singers in Christopher “CT” Terry and Brittany “B” Fugate (the latter also Moog), and a sound that both was and was not in league with the then-nascent movement of post-metal, they were able to bring together atmosphere and impact in a way that few acts of the style before or since have.

From the seven-minute opener “Dying Spiral Galaxies” — hell of a place to start — through the double-whammy titular finale of “If You Walk Before You Crawl” and “You Crawl Before You Die,” Rwake harnessed a creative scope that could either be the screamed poetry over acoustic guitar and distorted bass of “Sleep and Forget Forever” or the deceptively methodical onslaught of volume that was “Embedded,” and even listening to it now, you never quite know where the next turn is headed until it gets there. It is likewise gross and beautiful.

Comprised of Fugate, Terry (also of Iron Tongue), guitarists Kris “Gravy” Graves and Kiffin Rogers, bassist Reid Raley (who played with The Obsessed from circa 2013-2019) and drummer Jeff Morgan (also bass/vocals in the undervalued Deadbird), if Rwake‘s output wasn’t the product of multiple songwriters, it was at least informed by multiple personalities somewhere along the way. If You Walk Before You Crawl, You Crawl Before You Die was their third full-length, preceded by 1999’s Absence Due to Projection and 2002’s Hell is a Door to the Sun, and it took the avant sludginess of those offerings to a new level, remaining cohesive even at its most unhinged and noisiest — looking at you, “Woodson Lateral” — resulting in a powerful combination of control and chaos.

Concurrent to releases like Neurosis‘ The Eye of Every Storm, Isis‘ Panopticon, Cult of Luna‘s Salvation and Mouth of the Architect‘s Time and Withering, among others, it was a piece of an expanding aesthetic puzzle, yet it stood out even among peers and offered depth in a way that was organically its own. And while a lot of those bands used similar elements, be it synth, or effective layering of guitar, loud/quiet trades and malleable tempos, etc., Rwake tapped into a more vicious gnash when they wanted to — the first time I saw Fugate live was SXSW around the time of this release; she was hunched over at the front of the stage and I couldn’t even see her at first for the rest of the crowd in front of me, just heard that rasp, and when she stood up, a jolt of electricity went through the room; what a scream — and their songs seemed to take special delight in shirking the rules of microgenre even as those were still being defined.

Laced with samples throughout in a way that was very much emblematic of Southern sludge at the time — the album begins with some conservative or other worrying about the deleterious effects of rock and roll on the mind, ambient screams and acoustic guitar behind, before the requisite volume kick actually launches “Dying Spiral Galaxies” — If You Walk Before You Crawl, You Crawl Before You Die is still head-spinning in its complexity, and offers multiple paths to its audience. If you put it on and follow the guitar, you’ll get an offering of ace riffs front to back, peppered through with stretches of acoustic and more subdued fare, be it “Intro” ahead of “Sleep and Forget Forever” or “If You Walk Before You Crawl” itself.

Concentrate on the vocals and you’ll hear arrangements of marked reach in conveying emotion as well as raw ferocity, an abiding mournfulness that only feels more relevant now and a disaffection that seemed to be speaking to its own experience of the place it was from — lest we forget, CT produced the documentary Slow Southern Steel in 2010 — further evidenced by moments like the sample at the start and in the second half of “Woodson Lateral,” the warning of people living in the woods and on the road of the same name through Pulaski County, where Little Rock is located. Follow the bass and you’re consumed entirely. Follow the drums and it’s damn near jazz, at least intermittently.

There is, in other words, a lot to be heard if you’re willing to engage Rwake on their own wavelength, which given the extremity of purpose around which their work always was/has been based, not everyone can or is willing to do. Fair enough. An outlier position suits them well on If You Walk Before You Crawl, You Crawl Before You Die, with its closer “You Crawl Before You Die” nearly hitting the 10-minute mark and finding the band at their most dug-in as they make their way to the noise-drenched, mania-screaming, torn-apart-until-only-feedback-is-left finale; like they had a strategic reserve of scathe just waiting to be busted out at the right time.

Maybe part of why their work remains underrated is because they never quite fit in one niche or another, though they signed to Relapse for 2007’s Voices of Omens and 2011’s Rest (review here) — also a 2015 reissue of their 1998 demo Xenoglossalgia (The Last Stage of Awareness) — so they were certainly in good company despite all that pesky doing-their-own-thing that made them harder to categorize. That same ethic, along with the sense of punishment and downerism that so much of it conveys, is also why If You Walk Before You Crawl, You Crawl Before You Die holds up so well. If it was ahead of its time then, and maybe it was, it still kind of feels that way now. You’ll note the version above is from an 8-track tape edition from Texas-based Dead Media Tapes. And that feels about right,l. On its face and under the surface, it’s just pervasively, definitively weird. And weird is fucking awesome.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

I was going to close out last week with this record, but was both out of my mind in pain from my knee — I tore my meniscus at the start of October and there have been good days and bad since — and short on time. If anyone noticed the lack of a Friday Full-Length, no one said anything, and I did extra shares on social media for Bandcamp Friday, so whatever. I remain convinced that I give the biggest crap about that kind of thing anyhow, so it’s on me. Fine. Sometimes you need a day of just six posts on the site. Ha.

I had arthroscopic surgery on the same knee — they marked it with a pen and everything; “YES” in purple letters so they knew to do the left — yesterday afternoon, and could immediately move better. I was given a piece of paper with stretches and exercises to do three times a day, which I did last night before bed with a due amount of discomfort. But the mental difference of productive, healing pain instead of just ongoing injury pain is huge, and this morning I could bend my knee when I sat down on the couch to begin writing, which feels like a novelty even tight as my knee is. It’s been weeks since I could do that. Painkillers don’t hurt either, as it were.

The timing is good, because in 10 days, The Pecan, The Patient Mrs. and I fly to Mexico for the wedding of a couple who are good friends of long standing, and one imagines that will require walking in addition to the air travel. I don’t know that I’ll be running laps by then, but sore as I am now, I feel better than I did. On the mend, as it were. I am fortunate that my wife as a professor at a public university is on a state health insurance plan, or I’d probably never be able to have it fixed. The economic realities of medicine in this country are horrifying and infuriating. Universal healthcare now. Shit, universal healthcare 40 years ago. Alas, everybody’s got their money to make. Don’t get me started.

But I’m lucky I’ll spend hopefully as much time as I can stand not standing (I seem to have lost my ability to sit still during the day) this weekend dedicated to actively healing, icing, doing those leglifts which I hope will become less excruciating, then I have a follow-up next Friday morning with the orthopedist — dude was all-swagger; Lita Ford’s “Kiss Me Deadly” was playing on the radio in the OR when they wheeled me in, followed immediately by TLC’s “Scrubs”; surgical equipment kept in a huge black Husky-brand tool chest; this is who you want operating on you — to get the stitches out and see if I’ll need physical therapy. I might. I can feel a shift in muscle mass in my legs as a result of walking funny for a month, and I’m a wuss generally, so I wouldn’t be surprised if even in what for me feels like diligence doing the stretches, I’m not pushing hard enough.

And while we’re talking about follow-ups, I have one on Monday with my neurologist (if you’re interested, more on this adventure here) that’s supposed to be more of a psychiatric thing, I think? I don’t know. Anyway, the doctor was nice and it’s a virtual appointment, so that’s easy enough. The Patient Mrs. will be at work, but I’ll see if I can’t loop her in through Zoom because the wretched truth is I’m not a reliable narrator of my own life. Is anybody? I’m interested to hear what she says, even if the entire process feels somewhat like an indulgence. I do miss swimming, which I haven’t done but once to try it since I hurt my knee.

Gimme show today, 5PM, free to stream on https://gimmemetal.com.

New River Flows Reverse stream on Monday, and Mythosphere, High Noon Kahuna, Captain Caravan/Kaiser and Candlemass are lined up for review after that, so it’s a full week. Expect fewer posts while I’m in Mexico — it’s also Thanksgiving week here in the States, so there’s less going on generally — but I’m sure something will come along that I feel compelled to write about. Never fails, even if I’m on “vacation,” as much as traveling with a five year old after knee surgery can ever actually be that.

In any case, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, watch your head, hydrate, all that fun stuff. See you back here Monday for more shenanigans.

FRM.

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