### The Sword: Gods of the earth

#### 26/05/11 || Daemonomania

I’ll admit it – I’ve been totally hooked on “Warp riders” for months in a row. Thanks be to Global Domination and our unstoppable best of the year lists. Without ‘em I’d never bother looking into recent releases, focusing instead on building my Great Wall ov Classic Death Metal to unscalable proportions. “Riders” is chock full of nods to elder hard rock, almost endlessly listenable, and even got my evooool hating dad to tap his foot appreciatively. Word.

Like any good metalhead knows, a band’s earlier albums are their best. So in accordance with this piece of common knowledge I tried expanding my Sword ownership (beyond samurai and scimitar) to this here disc. Not that it isn’t pretty enjoyable, but there’s some key differences from their newest output that won’t let me give “Gods” a gentle nightly rimjob. Behold…

Daemo’s Problems With This Disc (listed in order of importance/relative annoyance):

1. The Vocals: Damn, am I not impressed with Cronise’s voice. He has the good sense to shut his trap for good chunks of each song, but when he opens it I get irritated. Oftentimes it sounds like the guy from Queens of the Stone Age attempting a Danzig impression. Ugly. Dunno if studio effects helped out on “Riders”, but thankfully something has been done about it since. I know weak vox are considered ok in the world of stoner, but it ain’t kosher ‘round these parts.

2. The Songwriting: I get the band’s “rocking out” mission – incorporating jam sessions into the finished product is cool. But frequently on “Gods” the tracks just wander aimlessly, eventually coming to a close after everyone runs out of weed and heads to the local bar for some Shiner Bock. Swordzo compensates with some catchy choruses though, for which some sins of unfocus can be forgiven.

3. The Production: The guitars sometimes drown out Cronise’s nasal croon, so props for that. But frequently everything else gets consumed as well. Got it. You’ve got a big riff. Congrats. But I still want to hear the drums.

So much for conventional “older ist krieg” wisdom. Still happy to have it despite these shortcomings. Can’t deny the power of material as infectious as “How heavy…”*, “Maiden, mother…”, and the highlight “Black river”. Even the instrumental jam “Sea” and the untitled little Irish ditty are pleasing. So go ahead and pick up some earlier Swordsmanship. Be warned that it doesn’t have the same polish or overall direction as “Warp riders”. Perhaps I’m such a subgenre n00b that I’m overlooking a thousand other pieces of fuzzy retro doom from 2008 that are ten times as good. Oh well. Take another fucken bong hit and deal with it.

Alternate song ideas: “How heavy this sax” about David Bowie’s struggles with the cumbersome woodwind, or “How heavy this crack”, about a dealer on the run from the cops weighed down by his product.

- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: Kemado
- Website: Sword MySpace
- Band
- John “J. D.” Cronise: vocals, guitars
- Kyle Shutt: guitars
- Bryan Richie: bass
- Trivett Wingo: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. The Sundering
- 02. The Frost Giant’s Daughter
- 03. How Heavy This Axe
- 04. Lords
- 05. Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians
- 06. To Take the Black
- 07. Maiden, Mother & Crone
- 08. Under the Boughs
- 09. The Black River
- 10. The White Sea
- 11. Untitled