I’ve been away for a while. Between moving and starting a new job, I’ve had my hands full over the past couple months. Hopefully I’ll be able to reestablish a regular publishing schedule. Fortunately, I stumbled back into writing organically. After what felt like almost two months of non-stop on-the-go, I finally found myself in that old, familiar position: sitting on a Sunday with nothing to do.

It was one of those long, sunny days in late August – you know them. The weekend festivities were decidedly over, and with the sounds of sports programming somewhere in the background, I lazed in my room. In this kind of Sunday afternoon the hours drag on as the sun seems to sit on the pine trees out your window. School starts the next day, but everyone tries to suppress this knowledge just below the level of speaking awareness. It was the kind of boring Sunday ripe for escape; for The Legend of Zelda and music by The Sword.

The Sword have long been hipster metal heroes, playing classic fantasy metal like they were ripped from the Seventies. They make music that sounds like Black Sabbath, if Sabbath had been Metallica fans and received all of their lyrics from a Des Moines high school’s resident D&D dungeon master. In a phrase, they should not be cool at all. And yet they’ve slowly gained a fandom through touring (opening for the aforementioned San Fran thrashers), appearing in Guitar Hero, and boasting just old-school gut-busting rock. There is something about raising a fist and the air and yelling “How heavy this axe!!” that sets the spirit free and lets the mind have some fun. You may be stuck inside on a hot lethargic day, but for an hour you are in another world, fighting a god.

The press for their latest album, High Country, has stressed how different it sounds from their older material. The line is that they traded in their Sabbath records for some Blue Oyster Cult and became way more poppy. (Or at least, as mainstream as The Sword can sound). So I didn’t know what to expect. Let it be known that whatever they did, did the world of good. Their previous album, 2012’s Apocryphon, was a tired and drawn out plod through tropes that they had done much, much, better on their previous albums. It seemed that they were finally out of ideas. On High Country The Sword proves that not only do they have more life, but they make one of the better albums of their career.

The most noticeable change is the inclusion of keyboards and synthesizers into their sound. Instead of sounding corny, they add texture to the mix and increase the retro-cool factor the band banks so hard on. A stony record, most of the songs carry an ’80s groove under the crunching riffs. Singer/rhythm guitarist JD Cronise, who usually prefers intonation to melody, sings in a lower key throughout the record and sounds good. The production is not as sludgy –  the added melodicism helps pull the listener in to the music, adding some mysticism to their sword and sandal vibe.The record really hits its stride mid-album. “Seriously Mysterious” contains a nice drum pop and plenty of electronic chooglin’ that opens to the band’s trademark wide open chorus. Always corny, always epic. In “Suffer No Fools” they finally include an instrumental that is worth more than just being a bridge. The album ends with the rousing climax of the final song (“The Bees of Spring”), perfect for rocketing down the highway.

Has The Sword turned pop? Hardly. Their music is that of fantasy paperbacks, of deserts and priests, where ancient decaying temples mingle with the futuristic technology of 1975. High Country fits into that aesthetic, even if it is not as heavy. With it, The Sword add expansive dreamthieves, scuzzy buzzards, and, yes, a few lilting petals to their dust.

4 Devil Horns