AAWKS – On Through The Sky Maze

by Mark 'Yeti' Richard · May 23, 2025

AAWKS is a four-piece band from Barrie, Ontario, Canada. They consist of: Kris Dzierzbicki on vocals, guitar, and synth, Randylin Babic on drums, Paraiso on guitar, violin/ synth, and Ryan “GrimePup” Mailman on bass and vocals. Their album releases include: 2020’s EP.1, 2022’s Heavy on the Cosmic, 2023’s Luna EP, and their latest, 2025’s On Through the Sky Maze. They also have other singles and split EPs available. On Through the Sky Maze was released on Black Throne Productions on May 2nd 2025. It contains nine tracks at forty seven minutes long.

AAWKS is a difficult band to categorize. They have a heavy and gritty sound that can be viscous and nasty and melodic and beautiful. As the opening track “Celestial Magick” demolishes, the band delivers their sound from a haunting welcoming of samples and a sludgy doom riff with ghouls and growls. AAWKS has a noise rocking element to their sound and the vocals begin with screams and transition into clean. They express some brutal death metal grunts, screams, and devastating riffs that are soul-stirring and evocative. The music is dark in its heavy execution and leaves the listener wondering where it will go next. “Death Trip” continues on the path of destruction with heavy post-hardcore and sludge mixed with some progressive garage rock. I am really enamored with bands that I can’t pinpoint and figure out. AAWKS is definitely one of them! Their music is abrasive and abstract but there’s the melody and clean vocals that seamlessly combine all of the components together. It’s quite the audio masterpiece, really!

“Lost Dwellers” is a rocking song that inject heavy stoner doom riffs and hard psychedelic and atmospheric sounds. The schizophrenic rhythms and off beat tones give this music an interesting allure. Everything fits smoothly somehow, in the numerous array of audio frequencies being created. AAWKS utilize some form of spoken samples on most of these tracks, mostly at the beginning and sometimes in the middle of a song. “Caerdroia” begins with a cool sample of: “Love and hate are horns on the same goat”. It kicks into a brutal riff of destruction with some diabolical screams and yells. The clean vocals join as the music uptempos a bit and rips along. AAWKS has a nice balance of nasty and clean vocal styles that work amazingly well with the heavy and introspective music. “The Figure” starts with a mammoth bass line that erupts into a doomy Sabbath style riff. The lumbering tones are accentuated by the clean singing of Kris Dzierzbicki, and the excellent vocals melodies. The song is varied and imaginative and gets gruesome on certain parts, with viscous screams carried out by bassist Ryan Mailman. The two styles trade off towards the end, after the guitar solos. It’s appropriately menacing and massively dense sounding. The song is also catchy and hook-laden which adds a dynamic twist to the track.

The sixth song is called “Wandering Supergiants” and it’s a trip! It has a spacy and cosmic dynamic of heavy psychedelic tones and ambience. The samples are laid out suitably in the middle within a haze of airy sounds of synth and other atmospheric effects. It mixes in the heavy sludge magnificently. “Drifting Upwards” is a heavy journey into outer space, and beyond. It has a smooth and steady stream of heavy psych flowing throughout but connects strongly with the heavy riffing also. “Cursed Soul” cranks out the stoner doom riffs and layers on the transcendental grooves. The elegant blending of clean and harsh vocals are in full bloom on this one.

The last song is simply called “Sky Maze”. It’s a great send off track for such an amazing album. The song delves deeper into the arrangements of the band’s varying sounds. The underlying and dualistic message stated from the band is: “On Through the Sky Maze explores themes of paradoxes, life and death, time, possession, the power of perspective and our individual paths and how things don’t matter at all but also completely and totally matter.” The album is very dense with heavy and ethereal sounds and meaning. It will absolutely require multiple listens but it will resonate more each time. I love when bands totally catch me off guard and blow me away with such a mind altering sound. AAWKS has accomplished that!

On Through The Sky Maze is a sonic adventure ride into a dark and heavy terrain of occult themes and the cosmos. AAWKS will send you on a fantastical journey through the center of your inner and outer world and totally expose your mental weaknesses in the process. This is a top-notch album all the way through with a very engaging sound that should appeal to most listeners of the heavy underground genre.