Tourdates has become something of an unofficial cheerleader for The Sword in recent months - we’ve loved their shows, their albums and we saw their ongoing support slot to Metallica as evidence that global recognition is just around the corner.

We’ve loved, too, the absence of pretentiousness in their music, their reverence for the roots of heavy metal and their ability to rock as hard as any band on the planet without recourse to a single nu-metal cliché.

So, if you’re the kind of reader who believes music publications should ruthlessly re-evaluate and objectively re-assess an artist on every hearing, look away now, because this isn’t going to be one of those reviews.

Got that? OK. Then I’ll begin:

Bloody hell! What a really bloody great band The Sword are. Bloody, bloody hell.

Making the most of a rare night off from the Metallica shows to grab a quick club gig, the Texan quartet drive a relentless progress through sizable lumps of each of their two studio albums, plus a couple of new tracks which display the same uncompromising devotion to elemental riffing and dark-hued fantasy lyrics. No whiney emo-esque bitching here, nor any fashionable urban nihilism - these are songs conceived on an epic scale and crashed out on equipment that has been available since the early bronze age.

This brand of hard rock is kind of old fashioned, but the assembled punters represent every conceivable tribe of the nation of metal, and all have come to sit at the feet of the prophets of a new age.

So there you have it: The Sword - the John the Baptists of metal. Here endeth the lesson, and bugger objectivity.

Richard Hodkinson
pic: londontourpix