by Richard Hodkinson, first published in LondonTourdates #037 ,12th December 2008
After packing-out The Underworld with a fiercly partizan crowd this year, the young Texan four-piece will spend the end of ’08 and half of ’09 touring the world’s biggest arenas with Metallica.
Metallica fans will hate them, but that’s because Metallica fans like their riffs clean, razor sharp and delivered straight from the crotch. This is not The Sword’s game at all, oh no. Huge organic lumps of sound are hammered into something approximating the shape of a song, rough-hewn and agricultural.
They bring to mind early Black Sabbath in both their devotion to the dirty riff and their black fantasy lyrical content. Stoner rock for metal heads or metal for stoners – it doesn’t matter, The Sword’s epic grinders will be filling some mighty big venues by the end of next year. And I’ll be there watching.
