The Sword – Age of Winters / 2006 Kemado / 9 Tracks / http://www.thesword.com / http://www.kemado.com / Reviewed 03 March 2006

The beginning track of “Age of Winters”, “Celestial Crown” is something that sounds a lot like a sludge-metal track but with enough in the way of progressive elements to really pull the band’s compositions out of the muck. Even though “Celestial Crown” is only two minutes long, the band can tell much through rich guitar work and responsive drumming. When the band throws in some vocals, as is present on “Barael’s Blade”, the result is a “Deliverance”-era Corrosion of Conformity sound with a little more in the way of grit and a little less grunge influence.

The band moves away from the shorter type of compositions with “Freya”, after which none of the tracks are any shorter than four and a half minutes. The longer tracks give The Sword a little in the way of problem in trying to give listeners enough material, but the band struggles back nobly to make the longer tracks successes. There is little in the way of The Sword trying to create a more current sound for their music; songs like the aforementioned “Freya” seemed to be pulled out of 1975 instead of 2005, and this is simply not a concern of the band. By not throwing in more current types of influences, The Sword have really created a period piece that stands on its own. There may only be nine tracks on this full-length but one reckons that these nine cuts would fit well on an LP. “Freya” has the extend of The Sword’s experimentation on this disc.

For the last two minutes of the track, the band does nothing more but repeat nearly the same riff over and over. While lesser bands would just be guilty of running out of material, The Sword really make this repetition essential to the track and fun to groove out to for that period of time. Each of the tracks on “Age of Winters” stems from this general sound and while there is no narrative theme to the album, the instrumentation links itself together well. There are not drop-outs or sub-optimal tracks, but rather a desire by The Sword to keep listeners rocking throughout the entirety of “Age of Winters”. Check out a track like “Winter Wolves” for something that truly will shock listeners in regards to the catchiness present in something so ruff and noisy; listeners will be singing this one for months and months after hearing it.

Top Tracks: Freya, Winter Wolves

Rating: 6.2/10

[JMcQ]