Review Summary: The Swords second album is a very solid release with plenty of great riffs, interesting lyrics and technical drumming.
I’ve been following the Texas based heavy metal band for a few years now and I love everything they put out, each album has a slight progression in their sound just enough to keep the band sounding fresh and relevant in the sometimes unforgiving world of metal.
Obvious comparisons will be drawn to the likes of Black Sabbath but I don’t one hundred percent agree with that when I first stuck on the CD I thought the vocals reminded me a bit of Ozzy but apart from that the guitar playing style is a lot quicker with emphasis on the thick pounding drums.
Gods of the Earth clocks in at a very respectable 48 minutes and this will fly by before you know what hit you. It makes for addictive listening and my finger was straight on the replay button, I find it’s a good album to have on in the background whilst with your drinking buddies. Even some of my non metalhead friends tolerate it much to my surprise.
Now let’s talk about the actual content of the album, these guys certainly seem to have a thing for fantasy based lyrics which goes hand in hand with the epic sound of the guitars check out ‘Lords’ if you want to hear what I’m on about.
Each member is equally talented on his instrument J.D and Kyle work brilliant together trading huge memorable riffs and I can’t say I’ve heard anyone sound quite like J.D in modern metal, his voice is well suited to the epic songs.
I do find the drums a little overwhelming sometimes, it’s mainly the thrashing of the snare (I don’t actually know much about drumming) but it feels over used in places that it almost takes over the sound of the vocals. This may be down to production, I found on the following release it sounded better balanced and more polished as a whole.
That’s a fairly minor issue and I can’t fault the rest of the playing as Trivett is a talented drummer. I find it hard to pick a favourite song of this album but it would probably have to be ‘The black river’ which you may recognise from Guitar hero, an extremely heavy and quite varied song I’m sure it sounds great live. Also check out ‘The white sea’ a seven and a half minute instrumental something which The Sword do very well, I’m pleased they had even more on the following album.
If you’re wondering if this album is worth your time and money then it certainly is if you like classic style metal with some doom influences and hard hitting riffs that work brilliantly with the vocals. I can really see these guys being massive with future releases it’s kind of shame their not that well known, no one I’ve asked has heard of them before but at least they have a strong group of loyal fans which I’m proud to say I’m part of.
