The Sword Reveals New Details on Upcoming Album
By: Carl Sundberg
Last updated May 14th , 2010

There's a lot of bands in the sludgy, doomy Black-Sabbath-like new school of heavy metal, but not many of them have opened for Metallica already, nor are they being praised by old-school grandpas and hipster kids alike. Hailing form Austin, TX, The Sword, is the band I'm taking about and they recently spoke out on their upcoming third album, "Warp Riders" which is due to crash down on our heads August 24th via Kemado Records. 
 
'Warp Riders' is to be the band's first release working with an outside producer (Matt Bayles, whose worked with Pearl Jam, Mastodon and Isis) and it's also the band's first concept album. And according to the band it's shaping up to be thunderously epic, both lyrically and musically. 

"This is what you'd technically call a 'concept album,' though I'd describe it as more of a soundtrack to a story I came up with," says The Sword guitarist/vocalist John "J.D." Cronise. "All the songs are aspects of the story, but they don't cover every detail from beginning to end. It's a science fiction story, and it deals heavily with themes of light and dark and perceptions of time. One of the main settings is a planet, which has experienced tidal locking, creating a side of perpetual day and a side of perpetual night. The reason for creating a narrative to base the songs around was essentially to provide interesting and varied lyrical subject matter with a core theme to tie it all together."

'Warp Riders' takes The Sword in more of a monster rock expansive direction, without sacrificing their underlying heavy metal roots, but they are not doing so to expand their audience beyond metal fans. "If more people listen that's great, but were not doing it for that reason," Cronise told AOL's Noisecreep recently. "We are just more interested in expanding our sound for ourselves. If we wanted to expand our audience we should just remake the second album over again, rather than challenge people with something new."

[Tags] Metal, Rock

Recent Related Articles