If I remember correctly, The Sword were among the first bands to get the dreaded “hipster metal” tag lobbed at them when they came seemingly out of nowhere back in 2006 with Age of Winters. I personally didn’t understand it; since when has ’70′s Sabbath flavored riff rock ever been considered “hip?” Do hipsters really listen to/like this stuff? The town I live in has a pretty sizeable hipster contingent, which is quite surprising for being centered smack dab in the asshole of the Midwest, but I have never once seen any of them at a metal or rock show, they’re too busy drinking coffee and listening to Bon Iver or some shit. Perhaps it had something to do with the way the band looked; Satan forbid someone make this music without sporting a navel-grazing billy goat beard and a denim vest that smells like a thirty-year-old beer fart. In reality, it was probably a combination of the hype surrounding the band and a pervasive media presence. Age of Winters was a competent if flawed album, but The Sword would continue to uh, sharpen their approach with 2008′s excellent Gods of the Earth, an album that (at least to these ears) was both heavier and catchier than what had come before. I somehow missed the quartet’s third album, the science-fiction concept album Warp Riders, but when Apocryphon was released earlier this year, I was ready to check back in with the band so many metalheads seemingly love to hate.
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