Liquid Sword

Metal is a fickle mistress. When executed well, the genre can be quite good. When it’s executed badly, metal is laughably horrible. (For an example of this, search Throwdown’s “Forever” on YouTube. Watch until at least 3:15. You will not regret it.)
The Sword’s Gods of the Earth is the admirable kind of metal – a reasonably good album, regardless of genre, and one that avoids many of the missteps that often plague metal bands.

The album starts off with one of the album’s better songs, “The Sundering.” The song begins with a subdued guitar riff, then cranks it up about 30 seconds in. The instrumental is hard, but doesn’t sacrifice melody, with some great backup guitar providing background chords.

Another highlight is the song “To Take the Black.” The pulsing beat moves the song along well, and the always-strong guitars perform well again. The song, at times, is reminiscent of Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia,” only without the irony – The Sword has essentially written the song to which Muse was paying homage, only better.

A major plus of Gods of the Earth is that it excludes many of the things that can, at times, make metal a parody of itself – the unnecessary six-minute guitar solos, the grating screaming vocals and the requisite bad acoustic ballad. Instead, The Sword sticks to what it’s good at.

However, that plus is also, in a way, a minus. Each song from Gods of the Earth, on its own, is a worthwhile listen. The album does not have a lot of variety, and after a while, it’s hard to keep interested. The songs are largely similar to one another, to the point where sometimes it’s hard to tell if songs are even ending.

The vocals are also characteristically weak for a metal album. The band’s singer – and lead guitarist – J.D. Cronise is mostly unintelligible, often drowned out by the rest of the band. On the other hand, the instrumentals play more than makes up for that, so it’s not a death knell for the album.

Though it’s instrument-heavy, Gods of the Earth is a strong album and worth a listen.