The Sword

Apocryphon

Written by: BV on 28/10/2012 22:52:42

For this review, I have had the pleasure of acquainting myself with the newest release from The Sword. The Sword effectively play a combination of stoner, doom and some of that good old hard rock. To my ears, “Apocryphon” is essentially The Sword’s most focused work since their debut album, containing some straight up monolithic riffs, far-out, yet storytelling lyrics and some awesome grooves in general. It’s classic stoner but with some endearing genre-twists along the way, so it doesn’t turn into a monotonous experience for the listener. The first three tracks; “The Veil of Isis”, “Cloak of Feathers” and “Arcane Montane” appear to be the strongest songs on the album, which makes for an effective opening. The mentioned grooves and riffs are clear as day on these tracks, and are executed with cutting edge precision. However, the rest of the album does contain some quality songs and works quite well as a cohesive unit.

The newest addition to The Sword’s sound is the use of elements from electronic music, which can be heard in the intro to the album’s title track. The inclusion of electronic elements is a bold move, seeing as some purists might shun this kind of idea, but to me, the incorporation is a success, and it really does add a sort of spacey vibe to an otherwise incredibly tight-packed sound. What I find particularly interesting about this album, besides the electronic infusion, is the way it makes me think of bands like Black Sabbath and Electric Wizard. A strange, but not exactly farfetched cocktail, seeing as both bands are heavy in their sound, and favor slightly occult lyrical themes, but in their very separate and distinctly unique ways. Therefore this combination is exactly how I would describe the new The Sword album; “Black Sabbath meets Electric Wizard”.

To my ears, the album only has a single downside, and that would be its length. Even though I think the album is packed full of good songs it does seem a bit lengthy. Normally, I wouldn’t complain about something like that, but in this case, it just doesn’t do the record any good. It would seem even more focused than it already does if the album was perhaps two songs shorter. But all in all, the album is a great listen, and it really does stick from the very first time you hear it, so I would definitely recommend this album to all the people out there, looking for a nice and heavy sound, with a groovy, spacey vibe.

Download: The Veil of Isis, Arcane Montane, Apocryphon
For The Fans Of:
Black Sabbath, Graveyard, Electric Wizard
Listen: facebook.com

Release Date 22.10.2012
Razor & Tie

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