Until very recently, smart-minded lovers of metal had to indulge themselves secretly or cop only to the psychedelic sludge of progressive freaks like Sunn 0)))) for fear of being labeled insufficiently ironic. But the shift initiated by rockers like Mastodon and High on Fire–bands shameless in both their riff-worn heaviness and their indebtedness to metal’s rich legacy of fantastic imagery–has reached full fruition with the full-length debut of the Sword. A showcase at SXSW and an opening slot with And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead got this band in front of a lot of hipsters who were blown away by the Sword’s relentless riffing and thunderously plodding rhythm section. And though those hipsters never got the wink of irony they were probably waiting for, it was too late. The maddening infectiousness of the Sword’s pummeling metal is undeniable, as it’s equal parts groove-oriented heaviness and gloomy riffage–like Trouble and the Melvins in a Sabbath cover-band contest. Even better, the songs are about things like “Barael’s Blade” and “The Horned Goddess”; if that doesn’t make for a powerful metal statement, I don’t know what does.
First appeared in the March/April 2006 issue of Harp magazine.
