The Sword may be the reluctant avatars of metal's recent indie acceptance, but it's unclear what landed them in that position. Nothing about the High on Fire-ripping or Black Sabbath sludge of the Austin quartet's debut album Age of Winters set it apart from the pack of bands doing the same thing in 2006 (ok, maybe those supremely tough dueling guitars, but that's hardly enough, right?). And, for that matter, none of its tracks struck any metal-for-non-metalheads poses (we're looking at you, Goblin Cock). Rather, their dominion over the scene seems like something of an arbitrary media decision. Eh, we might as well pick one to speak for them all, and they're better than Priestess, so why not?
The result: more praise, pressure, and criticism than deserved. But while they didn't ask for it (unless you count signing to Kemado against them), this is the Sword's hand to play. And on Gods of the Earth, the money-shot follow-up to Age of Winters, the band seems acutely aware of their position, doing everything they can to ratify the will of the people who've tossed the crown on their heads. That means bigger, louder, prouder songs, gongs, devil growls, Celtic acoustic interludes, and a lot more of the 12-sided die bullshit that got obscured by all the *Guitar Hero-*fated muck on the debut. And if that isn't a bad thing, it's certainly a silly one.
Even so, strip away all the aesthetic boosting, and much like Winters, Gods is a straight-forward metal record, content to rattle off wide-load riffs with recognizable Tolkien-style imagery as the backdrop. The usual suspects are all here: Frost Giants, Axes, Fire Lances, Black Rivers, White Seas, and whatever the hell a Hyperzephyrian is. For the most part, the goblin gobbledygook works. And when singer/guitarist J.D. Cronise doesn't take the D&D punchlining overboard, he and Kyle Shutt's riffs are downright Herculean.
But dig any deeper than the surface, and it's real fish-in-a-barrel sort of stuff. Dueling weedles. Halftime section. Galloping drums. Yippee. For the most part, it's all the same old bong-thrash, save for the record's one non-heavy trick: English-jig folk. Or more accurately, the happy Hobbit stuff that heavy metal's been crushing on for ages. The Sword use it twice, on the album's centerpiece, "To Take the Black", and the nameless hidden track that closes things out. On one level, it's a smart move, breaking up the monotony and adding something new to the sludgy stew. On another-- like the cheesy growl tucked in the middle of "Lords" and the ridiculously indulgent gong that peppers "Fire Lances of the Hyperzephyrians"-- it further dilutes the potency of an album that loses a lot of its directness in trying to fill the wrong shoes.
