SOUNDTRACK: THE SWORD-Gods of the Earth (2008).
So I used to be really into heavy metal. I’m not so much anymore, although I do enjoy the occasional bout of heaviness. However, I had been listening to some Black Sabbath recently, and I guess I was in the mood, because when I read some descriptions of The Sword, I was intrigued. Black Sabbath kept coming up as an obvious precurosr. So with that and the reviews saying they use silly middle earth swords and sorcery lyrics and they have screaming guitar solos, I had to get it. It sounded great.
And the first track, a fantastic instrumental, lived up to the hype. It’s fast, it’s furious, the guitars are totally something that I would have HAD to learn how to play back in high school. It was amazing. And then the second song kicked in, and it was great too. Finally I got to hear the singer, and when he started singing, the lead guitar played the vocal line in tandem and it was awesome. And then the lead guitar stopped and the voice was….where? It was mixed way way way in the background, sounding like he was in the next room. What was the point of all the weird fantasy lyrics is you couldn’t hear them?
And so it is with the bulk of the album. The music is first rate: excellent riffs, great harmonized guitar solos, Middle Eastern (by way of Led Zeppelin) atmospheres. The acoustic guitar even pops up in a couple of places too, showing a nice range of diversity. All kinds of things that make metal so wonderful. And yet, it’s so hard to get into the voice. It sounds kind of reedy and thin. If you crank it up really loud, it kind of works. His voice does creak through on occasion. And yet, with bombast like this, you expect the voice to be out there in front, leading the way like Bruce Dickinson or Rob Halford. I guess if you grew up listening to Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, you have a certain, if not standard, then expectation. Maybe if you grew up listening to some of the great stoner bands of the 90s, the muted voice is just par for the course, which is fine, but the guitar riffs don’t jibe with that. And, frankly, I just don’t hear Black Sabbath at all.
The album ends with two strong instrumentals. The 5 minute, powerful, chugging along, rifftastic “The White Sea” and then an untitled acoustic-jam-type ballad that is totally incongruous with the rest of the disc and yet seems to put a mellow calm over the whole proceedings.
Reviews of their first album suggest that the overall mix isn’t like this one. It has more Black Sabbathy. I can’t decide if it would be worth getting. I may have to just pull out We Sold Our Souls for Rock n Roll instead.
[READ: June 30, 2008] “The Next Thing”
This was a wonderfully subversive story. It is actually quite simple in scope: on the edge of a small community, a new shopping center called “The Next Thing” is being built and causing rumors to fly. The narrator resists “The Next Thing” because he doesn’t need it. He has all he needs met within his community. But then he starts to hear about “The Under” this amazing, not-to-be-missed section that is so far underground, it shouldn’t be missed. He finally decides to check it out and is overwhelmed by its immensity and by a strong feeling of unease.
As the story unfolds, The Next Thing expands. People start quitting their jobs and working in The Next Thing. Housing begins to spring up in The Under, and employees of The Next Thing start to move in there because it is so much easier than the commute above ground. As the community members move in, the executives of The Next Thing begin moving into the community members’ old houses. A transformation overtakes the community as the former community members all leave.
This is a wonderfully subversive story. It imagines the horrors that WalMart-phobes envision. And it’s easy to see how anyone could get sucked into whatever the next thing may be. I really enjoyed the piece, and it made me want to read other things by the author as well.
[…] but then something weird happened. I hated the lead singer’s voice (my discussion of their previous disc came to the same conclusion). It doesn’t do ANYTHING that 80s metal should […]