by John Bear
Daily Lobo
They say the pen is mightier than the sword.
That's why my fingers get tingly as they anticipate dissing on bands with names that start with "the" and end in a noun.
As it turns out, I ended up liking The Sword's album Age of Winters by the end, but bear with me.
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Of all the rock 'n' roll clichÇs, this one raises my hackles the highest. How many more bands do we need with "the" plastered in front? And lately the names have gotten more out of hand. The Bravery? That doesn't even make sense. Stop the madness. Please.
This kind of name prejudice probably makes me a bad critic, but when you see as many CDs as I do, you develop a hardened cynicism that is not easily reversed. After the first 500 highly-affected band photos are burned permanently into your cerebral cortex, you begin to pray for blindness.
So here goes my latest rendition of "Why I hate this band."
The Sword hails from Austin, Texas. This is by no means a death sentence from this grizzled critic, but I have noticed that one too many bands with delay pedals and waif-like lead singers who probably don't eat meat but have no qualms about slamming BB-sized balls of black tar heroin into their eyeballs. The entire band weighs less than the desk I am sitting at - the smallest one in the room. And the band members all spend an hour every morning getting those feathery bangs perfectly mussed up.
Don't take my word for it. In all probability I am just bitter about something entirely unrelated. But I can't fight the feeling that the Lester Bangs character in "Almost Famous" was right on the money: Rock 'n' roll has become entirely and irrevocably an "industry of cool." It is no longer how hard you rock but how hard you pose.
This is evident in what has become known as indie rock, a lot of which comes from that town in Texas. They all claim to have music that transcends musical boundaries. Unfortunately, as Joe Buffaloe would put it, they all transcend into the same place.
But apparently I have once again spoken before being completely up to speed on matters.
The Sword, though everything about its album from the quotation from William Yeats in the liner notes to the generally sissy look of the artwork screams indie poser, these dudes rock, for lack of a more descriptive term.
My apologies guys. I had you pegged as some sensitive band with guitar lines with one note actually plucked by a musician and the rest of the work done with a series of effects pedals. I couldn't have been more wrong.
The music is ugly and distorted and everything I love about rock 'n' roll. This CD takes me back to 1994, when I was an awkward-looking teenager not getting any, but getting plenty of flack for wearing Pendleton shirts before the grunge thing made it cool. This is grunge rock ten years after the fact.
It is probably a little more metal than grunge, but there is a definite grunge vibe present. All in all, the band sounds somewhat like newer Metallica being played by old Metallica. The songs meander by in a medium tempo with tons of metal breakdowns and thick walls of hesher guitar heaven. The lead singer comes off part James Hetfield, part Glen Danzig, part Ozzy Osbourne, and for some reason not entirely clear to me, part Trey Parker.
If you like the sonic qualities of older metal mixed with the modus operandi of grunge rock, buy this album and go to the show. You can get that angsty feeling all over again.
