{"id":395,"date":"2010-12-08T09:36:50","date_gmt":"2010-12-08T14:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=395"},"modified":"2010-12-08T09:36:50","modified_gmt":"2010-12-08T14:36:50","slug":"concert-review-the-sword","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2010\/12\/08\/concert-review-the-sword\/","title":{"rendered":"Concert Review: The Sword"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/sword_logo.jpg\" align=\"right\" height=\"300\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"260\" \/>Previewing the show in a single sentence, my friend told me, \u201cThese guys are masters of <em>the One<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed they are. <strong>The Sword<\/strong> \u2013 purveyors of a polished version of doom-stoner-epic metal \u2013 have their own trademark sound, and it centers around hitting the beat \u2013 and hard \u2013 on the one. These guys can play whiplash-fast metal, sludgy stoner metal, and everything in between. And they apply their style to epic sci-fi fantasy lyrical matter, which ups the interest ante considerably.<\/p>\n<p>The Sword played Asheville NC last week, and I went to check them out. I had spent some time with their latest, <em>Warp Riders<\/em>, part of an ongoing metal saga from the band. And I dug the album. Though it\u2019s harder and more metallic that is my general preference, the songs are sturdy, well-written and flawlessly executed. And The Sword are nowhere as pretentious as, say, <strong>Coheed and Cambria<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Resplendent in 70s-concert-tour styled <strong>Rush <\/strong>baseball jerseys, onstage The Sword looked more like a grunge or garage band. But the navigated the hairpin turns and stop-start rhythms of material form <em>Warp Riders<\/em> and earlier efforts. Far from being dour deliverers of the metal gospel, the band interacted with the crowd. Having replaced the abruptly-departing drummer <strong>Trivett Wingo<\/strong> mere weeks before the date, the band seems to have assimilated new drummer <strong>Kevin Fender<\/strong> into the lineup; he plays like he\u2019s been with The Sword forever.<\/p>\n<p>Said crowd was more diverse than I might have expected. Not all t-shirts were back, and there were actually women in attendance. Fist-pumping did occur, but the show was largely free of metal clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n<p>The two opening acts were well-chosen. <strong>Karma to Burn<\/strong> \u2013 notably featuring <strong>Daniel Davies<\/strong>, son of one <strong>Raymond Douglas Davies<\/strong> and <strong>Chrissie Hynde<\/strong> \u2013 put on a stellar show. Though the band is technically from West Virginia (of all places), there\u2019s little hint of Appalachia in their stoner-metal sound. And first-up act <strong>Mount Carmel<\/strong> were ace as well, showing lots of promise within the confines of their bluesy stoner-rock format.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Previewing the show in a single sentence, my friend told me, \u201cThese guys are masters of the One.\u201d Indeed they are. The Sword \u2013 purveyors of a polished version of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows","category-review","cat-44-id","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}