(04.21.2012) The Sword @ Emo's, Austin

After having seen these home town boys about 10 times during the first few years of their existence (2004-2008'ish), I hit a major drought in my opportunities to catch The Sword.  Such is the price of having kids (me) and experiencing a meteoric rise to stardom (them, not me).  But I was stoked to finally catch them again this past Saturday at the new Emo's here in Austin.

There were a couple openers, American Sharks and Dixie Witch, apparently both local Austin bands.  Neither was particularly noteworthy, although the lead singer of American Sharks provided some pretty good comedic relief with his obvious enthusiasm about opening for The Sword.  Let's just move on to the main attraction.

Setlist:

01. Night City
02. Tres Brujas
03. Freya
04. Hammer Of Heaven*
05. How Heavy This Axe
06. Barael's Blade
07. Cloak Of Feathers*
08. Lawless Lands
09. Maiden, Mother, & Crone
10. To Take The Black
11. Mountain**
12. Tears Of Fire
13. Seven Sisters*
14. Arrows In The Dark
(break)
15. Iron Swan
16. Winter's Wolves
* New song (confirmed title via Bryan Ritchie, the bassist)
** New song (unconfirmed title via the Googles)

That's a decent set, although for me personally it definitely could have been better.  First of all, while I think Warp Riders might be their best album so far, they opened with my 2 least favorite songs from that album (which are also 2 of my 3 least favorite Sword songs overall, with the 3rd being "Ebethron", from Age Of Winters).  In general, I thought their Warp Riders selections could have been much stronger.  And second, I'm really not a huge fan of getting tons of new material live before having heard it recorded.  So, I would have swapped out a few songs, especially if we could have gotten a couple of their longer epics like "The Black River/The White Sea", "Lament Of The Aurochs", or one of the "Chronomancer" tracks.  Something to give the show a little more length would have been nice.  As it was, they blasted through that set in an hour and 20 minutes.

That being said, they covered their whole catalog pretty well, and there was plenty of solid riffage going around.  They absolutely crushed old favorites "Freya", "Barael's Blade", and "Winter's Wolves"; those really got the crowd going.  "To Take The Black" was the best of the Gods Of The Earth offerings, although I thought they cranked out "Maiden, Mother, & Crone" pretty well, too.  The new material didn't blow me away, but its tough (for me, anyway) to gauge new material in a setting like this.  It was pretty meaty, so I look forward to checking it out on their upcoming release.  The highlight of the night for me, though, was "Arrows In The Dark".  That was the first song I really latched onto when first checking out Warp Riders, and I thought they just owned the place with it.

On the technical side, the sound was overall pretty good.  The drums and bass were nicely set up, deep and thunderous.  And when working on a single monolithic riff, the guitars were always crunchy and clear.  There were a couple times when everything got going fast and heavy where the guitars washed out a bit into a wall of noise, but in general they were able to come through reasonably well.  As usual, however, JD's vocals were a bit of a semi-disaster.  For the first few songs, there was clearly something wrong with the mic setup; the vocals were saturating and occasionally cutting in and out, it was actually somewhat distracting.  But eventually they got that sorted out.  The rest of the time, you could tell the plan was to keep his vocals at just the right level where they were audible, but not too audible.  Let's face it, vocals are not the guy's strong suit.  But, aside from the technical issues, it was a typical more-or-less satisfactory JD performance, usually a bit off-pitch but not detrimental to the overall show.

As far as the energy goes, everyone in the building was pretty pumped.  The guys in the band seemed excited to be back in Austin, and they executed with a ton of enthusiasm.  The new drummer and the guitarist Kyle were particularly demonstrative.  In turn, the crowd was thoroughly appreciative of every riff they laid down.  I don't seem to remember this from previous Sword shows, but a pit started up right in front of where we were standing, about 20 feet from the stage.  Normally I find this a bit annoying, but in this case it was more-or-less entertaining.  Mainly a bunch of banging into each other with no real malicious carnage.  It was more of a pretty happy, rocking-out-with-a-tallboy kind of vibe.

So, overall, not one of the best shows I've ever seen, but still plenty enjoyable.  Hopefully it won't be another 3.5 years until the next time I see them!

[Special kudos to my buddy Dennis, who provided a prime example of good parenting by bringing his 13-year-old to the show.  The kid even made a brief foray into the pit before the night was done.  Well done, all around.]