The Sword-‘High Country’ (Album Review)

[rating=4.00]

I’ve been a fan of The Sword for a decade now, following the musical trail of destruction left in the wake of these Austin metalheads through epic record after epic record of pure rock fury. To say they’ve been a favorite band of mine would be a bit of an overstatement, but they’ve constantly tickled all of my fancies in all the right ways. Their last record, 2012’s Apocryphon, saw The Sword reach new heights, culminating the sound they’ve been perfecting into a sort of thesis statement—it was the apotheosis of Swordness, distilling their oeuvre perfectly into a defining effort that was the result of their long trek from the hot Texas sun into the larger metal world.

The announcement of their fifth album, High Country, has been present in my mind for months now as I wondered what places The Sword would be carrying me towards with this outing. Perhaps it was a case of anticipation casting its shadow over appreciation, but the only things I felt listening to High Country were equal parts boredom and disappointment.

The red-flags started rising moments into “Unicorn Farm,” the fifty second intro to High Country which immediately signals a far departure from The Sword’s usual doom metal aesthete with its warbling keyboards played over a beat that can best be described as “funky.” While there’s nothing wrong with being funky in and of itself, for a band like The Sword, it comes across as trying too hard. Still, it’s just an intro track, right? That doesn’t need to mean anything. Sometimes intro tracks aren’t good, and that’s okay.

“Unicorn Farm” fades into “Empty Temples” and immediately it’s clear that the band is going for a different sound than the one their fans are used to. The Sword have always had a bit of a classic rock vibe in their channeling of Black Sabbath. Still, that’s more about the trappings of their genre than anything else. All doom is derived from Sabbath, so hearing the influence isn’t a bad thing. “Empty Temples” however feels less Sabbath inspired and more Sabbath derivative. More precisely, it feels like a shitty cover band doing a set of shitty Sabbath—the pointless and meandering Sabbath immediately prior to Ozzy being fired—while wearing Kiss makeup after a night of listening to Thin Lizzy.

Sadly, this is a bit of a tone-setter for the record. High Country is a pastiche of classic rock tropes searching desperately for a means of survival in a world that has moved on. Gone is the sense of epicness that propelled The Sword on earlier records, a fact best illustrated by the almost impressively terrible “Seriously Mysterious,” a track that redefines new lows for The Sword. Driven by a simplistic keyboard riff, the song is, at best, a series of fits and starts that never quite finds its footing and serves as a particularly pointed metaphor for the entire album.

There will probably be fans willing to follow The Sword down this musical rabbit hole they’ve decided to explore, and I’m sure this record will find its niche among certain subsets of listeners. But The Sword has always been a band who’s at their best when they’re bringing the thunder, assaulting the ears with a storm that brewed at the gates of Valhalla. High Country is more a drizzly day in Hoboken, eliciting sounds that neither suggest nor inspire any particular glory aside from finishing your fifth can of Miller High Life beneath the bilious glow of the neon signs adorning the walls of a dank bar.