I was told about THE SWORD about a year or two ago... I had friends from this and the tehr side of the atlantic falling over themselves raving about this band who had just been chosen to support Metallica and Slipknot... This band who had released an album that was just mindbendingly good...
One of those bands you hear about, and then do nothing whatsoever to follow up on...
I heard about them, meant to catch a track or two, check them out - bbut for some unknown and meaningles sreason - i never did.
So i was kinda happy when the album fell on my doorstep to review, as i had no excuse not to listen and check it out..
Thank Jesus Almighty i did...
How epic and mighty and spacey and brilliant do one band want to be?
From the sparse, 70's space oepra novel artwork right through to the Track Titles - like THE CHORNOMANCER, LAWLESS LANDS and (THE NIGHT THE SKY CRIED) TEARS OF FIRE - everything about the album before you even press play is perfect.
Then you do press play... and it's like a nightmare at altamont in space with added rock in your brain...
I am not a big fan of concept albums that involve stories - where the songs play narrative parts in a story from beginning to end - there have been some amazing atempts at this in the past...
THE WALL by Pink Flloyd
NEWS OF THE WORLD - Queen
TOMMY - The Who...
But for every good concept album you have a band like Avenged Sevenfold or Mars Volta or - even - Metallica - who come out with a concept album that hideously misses the point, and ends up being a collection of songs whose parts do not add up to a satisfying whole.
ST.ANGER
NIGHTMARE
FRANCES THE MUTE
All good albums when taken on a song by song merit, but when looked at as a narrative concept, sadly lacking... or so dicombobulating, that you are thrown away from the point by the histrionics on show.
THE SWORD are not ones to mess with a good story - this album tells the tale, in narrative format, with the songs as chapters - of Ereth, an archer banished from his tribe on the planet Archeron - a planetlocked in motion - scorched by three suns - one side perpetually in light, the other perpetually in darkness. A metaphor for the epic stroy of Good versus Evil - With Ereth Conscripted by the Chornomancer to free the world of Archeron from the tidal lock it has found itself in, and restore balance and cohesion to the World...
Deep Breath.
Epic.
Right?
And it is... opening with the instrumental wonde rthat is ARCHERON/UNEARTHING THE ORB and continuing through each track with more confidence than a band should really have when trying to juggle the triumvirate of jobs - Story/Musicality/Flow - but manage it they do, and what we have is an album that with or without the concept holds its own for the entire running time, and will leva eyou transfixed and bedazzled for days and days to follow...
The most wonderful part of the whole story is this though - the band, are cyphers for some characters (the Space Pirates anyone?) but also, the band is the key to the salvation of Archeron and Ereth himself - as he encounters the vessel known only as ...
You guessed it.
THE SWORD.
Words fail to truly explain how entertaining, well produced and unbelievably talented this album is... The band have crafted an album that could well survive for years to come, and the story itself could well be transposed from CD to stage to Film... The work is so solid that it would not be a stretch or a big job for a writer and director with half an ounce of talent...
And i pray, hope and wish it will happen.
If you are like me, lost in a sea of ambivalence about music, always looking backward as forward seems so dull and so fleeting - allow this album into your life, and be blown away by the band who have literally restored my faith in musical inventiveness.
Ladies and Gentlemen...
THE SWORD.
All hail the Kings.
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