The Hidden Masters

The Sword - Apocryphon
The Sword is a band that, despite releasing consistently strong albums, have been saddled with the unfortunate label of "hipster metal." I never really understood why they of all people got tagged with that particular appellation (and understood even less why one would use such a nebulous term to try to specify what the band sounded like). I assume that it has to do with the fact that The Sword received a lot of attention pretty quickly from the music press, and since they don't have any screamed vocals or blastbeats, people who wouldn't normally listen to metal were enjoying them. But doling out such an unhelpful label for that reason seems like lazy music writing, in that it ignores all the traits that The Sword share with the rest of the stoner metal genre in general, and in particular it shines a pretty harsh light on those critics' unfortunate inability to tell the difference between a band that clearly pours themselves into their craft with great attention to detail and influence, such as The Sword, and a band that doesn't (Wolfmother, I am looking in your direction).

The Sword made a name for themselves with their first album, Age of Winters, in 2006. Like many stoner metal records, it showed a clear love for Sabbath, and was filled to the brim with earthy references to the Norse pantheon and snow-covered forests, a theme their 2008 follow-up Gods of the Earth shared. By 2010, they were apparently feeling restless, and with the LP Warp Riders, they abandoned Earth for a much more sci-fi theme, which they pulled off with aplomb, adding some Judas Priest-style riffing to their Sabbath chops. The newly released Apocryphon finds the band somewhere between those two thematic extremes, with imagery that recalls the Hyperborean world of Robert E. Howard, where magic and technology meet in strange ways. If you're noticing a trend of the kind of sixties and seventies sci-fi/fantasy concepts that most frequently show up in airbrush art, you're not wrong. The Sword know what they like, and they use it well.

Musically, The Sword have been steadily improving with each new release, and Apocryphon is no exception. The riffs oscillate between brain-twisting complex and head-nodding simple, but the song structures remain fairly lean, which keeps the whole album surprisingly nimble. Everything is nicely balanced between getting to the point and serious riff worship. The record is fun, but also clearly not a joke; the band is serious about its influences, it's just that its influences are not always totally serious. The guitar work is excellent, as you might expect from a band like this, but the rhythm section is also to be praised for knowing just what to add and where. The aforementioned lazy critics sometimes seem to harp on singer JD Cronise's voice for being overly deadpan, but once again, this opinion betrays their lack of familiarity with stoner metal as a genre. What exactly do you need his voice to be doing that it isn't? If I need to cite precedent for a drier vocal delivery still being effective, I'll just throw out the first four Sabbath records and trust that will end the argument.

Ultimately, if you're familiar at all with The Sword or what they do, you know what you're going to get with Apocryphon: a quality record that delights in both the heavy rock stylings of the seventies and the desert rock/stoner metal sound of the nineties. If any of this sounds even remotely intriguing to you, then definitely listen to this record. It's fun and engaging, and if someday I ever meet anyone who actively doesn't like it, I will be forced to question their ability to understand the point of rock and roll in general.

Honey Lungs and Falling Blackbirds

Black Moth - The Killing Jar
Black Moth, a stoner rock outfit from Leeds, England, sound like a lot of things. You could fill a review with comparisons: they sound like Black Sabbath with Grace Slick singing for them, they sound like Acid King with a punk rock impatience, they sound like Alice in Chains imagined by Donita Sparks. The list could be much longer, and all of it would be fairly accurate, but all of them would miss the mark a bit. Black Moth reach throughout rock history for their influences, but in the end, the brew they concoct is their own.

The Killing Jar is built on a stoner rock template, but you only have to listen to the opening track, "The Articulate Dead," to hear just how much punk rock has made its way into Black Moth's sound. In fact, the ratio of Black Sabbath sludge to Misfits punk makes this album somewhat reminiscent of the Melvins and the heavier grunge acts of the past. The sound is low and filthy, a perfectly distorted bass-heavy grind for Harriet Bevan's bold vocals to soar over.

A clear highlight of the album is "Blackbirds Fall," a midtempo display of all of Black Moth's best tendencies. A full-on stoner outfit would take riffs as good as these and build an eight minute opus out of them, getting as much mileage out of the elements as they could, but "Blackbirds Fall" is a testament to Black Moth's punk brevity, as it only clocks in at four minutes. It tells you exactly what it needs to and departs without overstaying its welcome. This is true of the whole album really, with ten songs at under forty minutes, the album is surprisingly tight for a stoner/sludge effort. There is plenty of memorable lead guitar work, but very few flashy solos (another example of their punk/grunge influence). The production by Bad Seeds drummer Jim Sclavunos is spot on, the combination of the thick, dirty guitars with Bevan's clear, powerful voice is practically addictive.

The Killing Jar is an album refreshingly free of attempted superlatives. It's not trying to be the heaviest, fastest, slowest, or trippiest. It's a release that simply contains ten heavy, catchy, fun songs, which is a lesson that more heavy bands could take to heart. Other heavy albums will no doubt receive more attention this year, but I'm betting I won't play many of them as often as this one.