The riff has always been an essential part of rock and metal music, but tonight The Sword and their supports have raised that necessity to a level of worship. The signs have been plain to see for some time, but here is the proof – the “heavy” is being put back into heavy metal.
Saviours
Support band Saviours hail from Oakland, California, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that they look like an old-school thrash band, complete with frizzy unkempt hair, tattoos, plaid shirts and Gibson Explorer guitars. They sound somewhat like a Bay Area thrash band too – albeit one that has been binging on sleeping pills and gin.
Saviours take all the components of classic thrash metal and play it heavier and slower than anyone else. Leviathan lethargic riffs that should soundtrack a modern re-scoring of the Ride Of the Valkyries are punctuated with lead lines and solos howling through the midrange. The drumming is snare-focussed with lots of rolling patterns and crash - the guy on the throne could probably get the retail price on his hi-hats considering how little he uses them – pinning down galloping triplet rhythms over which the frontman bellows like a stoned Lemmy locked in an old plate reverb tank.
It’s fantastic stuff. There’s plenty of bands out there at the moment with a sharper technical edge than Saviours, and hundreds more that crank up the tough-guy posturing and don’t-tread-on-me attitude to eleven … but none of them come close to the sheer power of Saviours on stage.
The ogre-powered proto-thrash of “Crucify” should be played to Killswitch Engage fans three times a day in the hope that they realise the route out of their creative cul-de-sac. If you’re into heavy music for the sound rather than the image, Saviours may well live up to their name.
The Sword
During the interval my companion observes to me that, having to follow Saviours, it’s going to take something special for The Sword to come across quite as well. By the time they are halfway through their first track, it’s plain to see by his face he needn’t have worried. The Sword are everything you ever loved about thrash metal with all the rubbish removed.
The secret of the formula is revealed in a visual clue; The Sword dress like dazed and confused college kids from the late seventies, and it’s by using the classic metal sound of that era that they infuse the thrash template with new life.
Huge rumbling riffs - precision-engineered and down-tuned to a fearful girth - chuggity-chug their way out of the stacked amplifiers behind the band while JD Cronise squeezes his vocals into one of the slim chinks left free in the soundfield. You can’t really make out what he’s saying, but that doesn’t matter. You can feel what The Sword are about.
The sheer physical power of The Sword’s material comes from their delivery method; almost every single chord, riff and hook is played in unison on bass and two guitars, creating a thick and brutal sound that feels like it’s shaking the building apart around you.
I look around at the sparse crowd and I’m torn between feeling sorry for the band that there isn’t a heaving sell-out crowd to watch them do their thing, and feeling secretly pleased that the bandwagon hasn’t caught up with The Sword yet. This is still something special, like our little secret – and while there may not be much full-on headbanging going on anywhere other than on the stage itself, every cranium in the room is nodding in unison like a synchronised mass of Churchill dogs, their eyes and ears transfixed by The Sword.
As aloof as their music may seem, The Sword know how to please a crowd, and when they return for an encore they belt out a short and very sweet cover version of Faith No More’s “Surprise – You’re Dead”. If there was anyone in the room who hadn’t been converted to their cause before, The Sword now have them in the palm of their hand, and the nodding dogs become Cheshire cats who grin their way through the spectacular solo-trading instrumental that closes the show.
I try very hard to avoid absolutist statements in my reviews, but they’re good enough to make me break that self-imposed rule – The Sword are a staggeringly good heavy metal band, and may very well be the leading edge of the next big stylistic change in the genre. Go and see them as soon as you get the chance; it won’t be long before they’re playing venues you can’t afford.
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