Album: High Country
Year: 2015
Rating: 56/100
After blitzing us listeners with monolithic slabs such as "The Age of Winters", "Gods of the Earth" and "Warp Riders", among others, The Sword are back with a new album. "High Country" is effort number five for the Texan quartet, but how does it hold up in relation to their previous offerings?
Erm, not that well, if I'm going to be completely honest. Don't get me wrong, the music is as tight as ever, and the band have changed their sound ever so slightly, which is fair enough. There is, however, one crucial problem here. The Sword appear to have forgotten how to write songs. Unfortunately, this is prevalent from the off, as "Empty Temples" and "High Country" feel self-indulgent, directionless and largely lacking in anything resembling structure. The sheer volume of filler tracks on the album does little to help, as "Agartha", "Seriously Mysterious" and "Suffer No Fools" feel a lot like outtakes that were included simply for the hell of it, while "The Dreamthieves" is a perfectly good song ruined by the unnecessary addition of a fade out that feels completely out of place. It's not all bad news for the Sword on "High Country", though; while "Buzzards" and "Mist & Shadow" aren't on the same sort of level as "How Heavy This Axe" or "Iron Swan" from previous efforts, they work perfectly well as stand alone numbers.
"High Country" is, for want of a better description, a complete disappointment. With a few exceptions, it is largely the sound of a band phoning it in. Not one of the Sword's better efforts; stick to "The Age of Winters" or "Gods of the Earth" instead.
Track list
- Unicorn Farm
- Empty Temples
- High Country
- Tears Like Diamonds
- Mist & Shadow
- Agartha
- Seriously Mysterious
- Suffer No Fools
- Early Snow
- The Dreamthieves
- Buzzards
- Silver Petals
- Ghost Eye
- Turned To Dust
- The Bees of Spring
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