By: \u00a0Terry Vickroy (DJ TV)<\/p>\n
The Sword: High Country<\/p>\n
High Country<\/em> is the fifth studio album from Texan metal band The Sword. Throughout their career, this band has slowly been evolving their sound. They\u2019ve gone from an old school metal style (Age of Winters and Gods of the Earth) to a more hard rock feel on their recent albums (Warp Riders and Apocryphon).\u00a0 Due to this, I was very curious to see where High Country would land stylistically.<\/p>\n Right away you can tell this album is going to be something different with the instrumental intro, “Unicorn Farm”. It\u2019s got tons of synths and even a clap track. While it was a decent intro, I found this very jarring. This not what I expected a Sword album to sound like. I\u2019m all for a band trying something a bit different, but it really depends on if they can pull it off.<\/p>\n The first half of High Country<\/em> is pretty decent. They have some sweet riffs and I can almost embrace the style they are going for. They aren\u2019t the greatest songs of their career, but it mostly hits the mark. It\u2019s not till you hit the track “Seriously Mysterious” that it starts to fall apart. This song is just ridiculous. They try to pull off a funky psychedelic rock vibe, but it just doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s pretty much all synth and the vocals fall flat. I can appreciate the Sword trying to get out of their comfort zone, but this doesn\u2019t work for me. The rest of the album suffers from this as well. They get too ambitious and the songs suffer for it.<\/p>\n High Country<\/em> has some good tracks, but it\u2019s very hit or miss. They have fully embraced their hard rock roots, but it really doesn\u2019t do it for me. There are tons of synths, generic riffs, and strange experimentation. If you are a Sword fan, this is not the sound you are used to hearing. All this experimentation has brought down the album and given us their weakest album by far.<\/p>\n 2\/5<\/p>\n