Arkansas's sludge monsters Rwake are back in mouth watering style. With their new album "Voices Of Omens" burning a whole in the ozone of the metal stratosphere Metal Chaos spoke with scream monger C.T to get the low down direct from the Little Rock, AK.

Really good. We did the East Coast, then came home for about a week and a half. Then went out and did the West Coast. Doing the West Coast is like doing another country man. You just have to spend so much money just to do the West Coast. The cost of gas is so ridiculous these days. In mean in the South you can play Memphis and four hours later you can be in Nashville. It is like all over the East Coast but out West you have to drive ten hours to hit the next big town. If you are going to spend all that much money you might as well try and get some plane tickets and head out to somewhere you've never been before.

We kind of just picked up from our last record, but emotionally its way different. I like to think we write positive feeling to our music. It is much more epic, the songs are much longer and we can really feel the songs when we play them live.

After you finished up touring in support of "If You Walk Before You Crawl, You Crawl Before You Die" the band went into hibernation. What were the reasons for the hiatus?

Jeff and B. had just had a kid, and initially we thought we'd get right back out there but it just wasn't like that. Things had happened to where they just weren't able to get out there. Also things had happened, not just to them but the rest of us also where we'd all had some slaps in the face. The music had to take a back seat completely, which was so sad to us. It was never going to mean we'd break up or anything like that, it was just that there were some real life things going on that made us realise that real life is out there. It made all take a step back and look at what was important in life. Our band is important but we just had to figure out a way to put everything else first and the band second. We had been doing the band and putting it first all our lives. They weren't the only ones to have kids. Our guitar player had two kids before that and I have a kid. It was all of that, you know? Some real life shit where we had to take a step back. We weren't even jamming and barely getting together, just so we could stay together and talk as friends. In the two or so years we were playing a show like every seven or so months. We always played Emissions Festival no matter what. if you drove out to that Festival it would be like "well Rwake is here, so they haven't totally disappeared". Then finally after all that happened Relapse came in there and made us step up a little bit more.

Given all that personal shit you've just mentioned, how much of that had an effect the writing of the new album?

Oh all of it. Even if is not written in the music it is embedded in the feelings we have now, where some of us would have been much more care free in the past. We have definitely matured more and it is all in the music. Personally for me my Uncle had passed away, and while I wasn't best friends with this guy it was just the way he went out. He was this really bad dude and he committed suicide in prison, and at the same time I was having a baby on top of having back surgery. I was also hit by a bus by the city which refused to pay for any of this. So how the fuck do I deal with shit? That was just me and I wasn't the only one who went through stuff but you'll never hear me sing about how I had back surgery and it hurt like hell. You an more or less sense that shit in my voice and in the feelings coming out of me.

How did you approach the writing of the new record, was it a group or individual process?

It was a little different, it was a lot more individual. Our drummer Jeff wrote a lot of stuff on this album. He has always been a writer in the band but man he stepped up and wrote all the stuff that was just coming out of him. He just couldn't stop it. Jeff's Great Grandmother, who he loved, passed away and left him this house which is on the side of a small mountain. He just locked himself up there and just constantly wrote. He must have written 60% of the album up there. That was something we'd never done before. I mean we'd written stuff individually but had brought it all back together in the jam room. No one ever wrote 60% of an album and brought it in you know? Maybe a riff here or a riff there, but he really got consumed by it. To begin with we were driving an hour out to his place and because it was secluded we knew no one would fuck with us out there.  Me and Brittany weren't even throwing vocals over it yet but we were going out  there so we  could  get a feel for the music.  Doing  that process

Given the success of "If you walk before you crawl, you crawl before you die", did you ever feel that there was any internal or external pressures on the band when it came time to write the new record?

No. That is just one thing I'd never be worried about. The dudes who write in our band are always fucking around with something. If we'd have taken a longer break we would have probably have written twice as long an album. Just because it is all bottled up and you have to get that shit out man. There are a couple of dudes in our band who are primarily jammers and don't really write anything but the people who do write, I don't see that being a hard process. I see what you're saying that it has been so long we might be rusty but it just seemed to flow just like we'd all been waiting to show each other this or that.

It wasn't really intentional. We love it when somebody who is not from our area say's that song gives me that kind of vibe, we love that but it is 100% unintentional. It's not like we just sit around listening to Lynard Skynard all day you know what I'm saying? I mean we do and we have, but the stuff we listen to most is the stuff we try our hardest not to sound like. I really think it is something that comes out no matter what, it is just something we just can't help. The older we're getting the more this stuff is going to come out.

He recorded our last record and he is just a real good buddie of ours. When we recorded our first album that someone actually released us, we had no body to record us. There was a little studio in Arkansas and there was just nothing. That whole process of recording that album was hell, I mean it was just bull shit. After the album we went on tour, and on the third day of the tour we met Sanford. This was in 2002. His band played their first club performance with us and we just hit it off. He gave us his bands demo and explained that he had recorded it and let us hear his recordings. We just knew that from then on we were going to work with Sandford. He also really showed an interest in recording us, he knew how to record us. We hadn't captured the sound we'd been looking for all these years and with Sanford it just clicked, we just knew. We heard his recordings and we knew he was the man for us. To us he is almost like a band member, he is the same age, he is from the South, not that that matters. He doesn't take a lot of the shit we say seriously because he knows our cynical attitude. So it is really cool not to have a touchy person and apart from the that the recordings are really cool. You can tell just how much that dude has learnt since 2004 in this recording, I mean I love the album he did with us before but then I hear the new one and I'm like god damn! To a lot of other people he is this up and coming engineer but to me he is just my buddie. He is such a good dude and any band that thinks they should record with him just should do it. There are times when we are arguing in the studio over a song arrangement or different vocal patterns and Sanford would step up and tell us what he thought. A lot of the stuff we might not have ever done on the album, but Sanford would say yes or no if we should do it and it all came out good.

I don't really know the significance behind the title to be honest, Jeff came up with it. It was so kinda on the spot. I know it has some kind of significance because Jeff is not the type of guy to say something that has no meaning. This dude is our drummer, but is really a bass player and played guitar in some bad ass local bands yet he is capable of writing some of the most haunting poetry imaginable. We were racking our brains for a title. I had one. I wanted to call it "On Satan Move In Our Voices" and I could tell you the whole fucking story behind that (laughs). Jeff loved my title, it sounded old, it sounds evil and a lot of different bands would have a title like that not bands like us, but that is why I wanted it. No one else in the band liked it. So that whole week in the studio we didn't have a title until the last day. Relapse I don't think liked the title either, on email I could sense them going na, even though they didn't say so much. So the last day in the studio Jeff came up to me and said he'd come up with a title which turned out to be "Voice Of Omens". I thought it was totally cool and it was a play on my title but a lot more simple. He told me to tell everyone he didn't come up with it, so none one would say hell no to his idea. He told me to say Gravy came up with it in a dream or some shit and I just knew Gravy would go along with it. He was like sure, tell everyone I came up with it. We did and every one liked it.

They called us on our break. We were doing nothing, you know? We didn't have a website or a myspace page at the time. We had this club down here, its not ours but belongs to a buddie of ours, and we are pretty much there all the time and Rwake don't play anywhere but this place. Alan got this email from Relapse asking us to contact them, but we didn't really think anything of this. We were like OK they've got a Relapse band coming to Little Rock and they want us to play so someone will be at the show. That was all we really thought about it but I called them and they were full of questions about what we were doing and what was going on? So I just started talking through my ass about how we were writing songs and we're fucking busy. We weren't doing shit in reality. We'd written two songs because right before they called we'd begun to jam. That is what is weird, we hadn't jammed for like six months, and two weeks before Relapse called us we got back together and jammed three times and wrote two songs. The first and last song on the album. Which to me are the longest and most hurtful. They have been real nice, we're seeing ad's everywhere when our album came out. They helped us get a van and is certainly better than we would be doing with anybody else. We love At A Loss because it's Josh and he is a one man fucking army, but it is how much can he really do? I mean Relapse have so much more than most people because they have been doing this shit for so much longer.

You're just back from a headline US tour are there any plans to get across to Europe?

We really really want to get to Europe, I mean that was our whole goal with this record. It was being set up but Relapse seem to think there aren't enough people who want us to come over there. The  company who books the bands over there contacted us and wanted us to tour over there. So we set two week thing. I then told probably ten different interviews we were going over there, then Relapse came back and were like this that and the other. Unless we take money out of our own pocket and pay for the entire thing, they're saying that is the only way. We thought that because we're all felons (laughs) we'd never get into Europe, but we found out the real laws behind that and how we could still go over there. We just figured we had no rights what so ever. 

How do you juggle life between the band and your personal lives, as I guess the band doesn't support you all financially (well yet anyway)?

How is crazy. The reason is we love doing it and would absolutely crazy if we didn't do it. Some people ask us how do we do it? We're like how do you not do it? I have a kid and am always broke touring but come home and go straight to fucking work. If I get fired for going on tour, as soon as I'm home and I find a fucking job as fast as I can. I don't understand how people can bitch about it. We are six members and I'm not going to lie we try to get a guarantee at our shows. With six people its not like we are making money. We are just now not calling home and begging to have money sent to us. We've toured a lot before this and only now are we able to say to our families that they don't have to send us much to eat on. We're getting eat out of this and maybe five or ten bucks extra per day. Many men do many things tougher than that, but a lot of  people  out

there are spoilt rotten. I work at a restaurant, I have a kid and a wife who is in school and it is a juggling job but there are people somewhere that have to build pyramids for a drink of water. You just got to love it, and if you love it it is easy. Even if it is hard. I think everyone should do it. It is shit like touring that pushes them, the only way to test yourself.

At the moment Jeff has got up on Myspace a band called Mad Man Morgan, where he does all the vocals, all the drums and guitars. It sounds like Thrash but with a hyena doing the vocals, its fucking awesome dude. When that dude goes home that is what he is doing. I mean he has a kid and wife, but he goes into that room where his shit is and just bangs that shit out. If he ever has a riff that he thinks just isn't Rwake, even though we try to do a lot of stuff, sometime it could be straight Thrash and we know we won't do that. For example Jeff plays double bass all the time, but he just refuses to in Rwake, cause he thinks we are a different kind of band. He is like I don't want a John Bonham kit. I just want a John Bonham feel to it. He always want an old sound with a new style. So for him creatively when he has those boundaries in his head he needs an outlet other than Rwake. Our other guitar palyer, Kiffin plays bass in Har Meggiddo. A real bad ass local band. One of my favourite local bands ever. Kiffin is a bass player, he just joined our band as a guitar player. You can tell the difference in his style when he is playing bass. That dude is the lone jammer! He has a lot of time when he isn't sleeping (laughs), he is either waking up and writing, or waking up and riffing or waking up and jamming. The Son of Jor-el stuff, they just send me vocals and I lay them down. I only really do that because they are my friends. I like the jams and think it is really neat that all these different dudes from all over put out records. Deadbird and Har Meggiddo is far more focused. I mean we all have day jobs, but all this shit is so much more fun than focusing only on that day job.

For all the people who read this over there (Europe) just know we really want to come over. But it isn't up to us! We're really glad that people are reading our stuff. We're proud to be from Arkansas, and despite all the fucked up shit here we're building a scene that we are proud of. We just want to put ourselves on the map. Thanks to every one for looking us up and buying our shit.