Review by Rosh on December 25, 2021.

Most would agree with me when I make the general claim that there's plenty of institutions occupying any niche that come under some heavy fire for one reason or another, and then no one can shake the idea that they suck because of minor nitpicks someone pointed out that aren't truly a big deal. A hate bandwagon is a pretty common concept to bring up and in fact it's a cheap cop-out to accuse people of when you don't like that something you dig is getting some flak, potentially for valid reasons that you could be overlooking. As such, a lot of the same people who'd agree with my initial generalized claim that began this review might say that me implying the hate for The Sword's debut album is little more than a bandwagon is a hollow accusation. To be fair, they have numerous reasons to cite as to why The Sword are a notorious cancer to the metal community or are too hip or commercial to be relevant to deeper metal circles.

I don't get it, because even as a colossal fan of early doom records by Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Witchfinder General, Saint Vitus, Trouble, etc. I really think Age Of Winters is an overall solid example of the stoner metal genre, and I don't think it matters tremendously that it's more commercialized or gives doom a bad name or whatever, because stoner doom in general is easier to digest than emotional sledgehammers laid down on trad doom albums like "Born Too Late". Stoner doom is really just about enjoying the bass-heavy grooves of early metal more than it is packing the hardest emotional punch, despite there being exceptions obviously. The Sword delivers enjoyable and groovy stuff on their first album.

It's true that the lyrics are kind of uninspired but a LOT of classic metal has dreadfully worse and more uninspired lyrics than "slayer of the spider priests, spiller of the silver blood", or whatever that line is no one seems to shut up about. Folks, read the lyrics to "Fade To Black", they're as autopilot as it gets for writing sad lyrics. Iron Maiden has some bad and cheesy lines too, but that doesn't stop me from jamming them day in, day out. And this is stoner metal for fuck's sake, not prog. A little bit of strung together fantasy lyrics are fine, it's lighter hearted stuff like I said, it doesn't have to do Manilla Road justice per se. Also there's like some issue people have with the fact that JD from this band used to be an indie rock musician or something. All I can say to that is, how insecure about liking metal can you be that you need to gatekeep who can and can't play metal? Sure, maybe if he used to be in an indie rock group and sucked at playing metal music, then we'd have a bone to pick, but he doesn't. His band delivers competent stoner metal inspired by the likes of Sleep. So onto the music and why I think it's not half bad.

First of all, this music isn't really an approximation of "old-school metal" blended together into some strange mixture of heavy, thrash, doom, etc. as everyone tried to imply. It's simply a slightly more modern take on stoner metal in its pure form, which in and of itself, was often times a modernization of music like heavy psych and early doom metal. Make no mistake, The Sword knew they were playing in the stoner metal niche, perhaps knowing that they would be marketable in this style due to the metal climate at the time, but it's just not true that they decided to play traditional heavy metal and ended up playing stoner metal type stuff as some approximation. They listed Sleep, Melvins, and Black Sabbath as primary influences people, so we can forgive them for citing a few bands outside the doom-adjacent niche as influences too. It's ok to mix and match, that's the only reason metal subgenres exist anyway. Even if for commerciality's sake, a little experimentation isn't something to be scoffed at.

One thing that may confound listeners about the songs here is that they're approaching them as doom metal when they're actually stoner metal, plain and simple. Stoner doom, maybe, but again, that's far removed from (early) Trouble or what have you. The riffs are enticing enough and actually pretty catchy on 'Freya' and 'Iron Swan', with simple grooves being the focus. However, JD's guitar style goes above and beyond mere commerciality because it takes acceptable tutelage from the likes of Sleep and, on 'Winter's Wolves', I would argue even Sabbath in their prime. Honestly, the guys just want you to sit back and enjoy the tunes, and you can't really hate them for it, even if it is a cash-in. I got news for you, plenty of new wave thrash and death metal bands are cashing in on trends or whatever, but who ducking cares if they make enjoyable music. There's plenty of bands with passion and integrity out there to counterbalance them anyway.

Umm, hmm what else can I say about the music. Oh yeah, JD's vocals are also a very neat touch for the less abrasive, more accessible side of stoner metal. A nice and loose feel to the tone of his delivery, the point of which, again, seems to be missed. People, if they were trying to merely cash in on the "retro" metal revival, JD would at least go for a typical Ozzy impression. But he doesn't, he takes influence from singers like Chris Cornell and the dude from Fu Manchu I would argue. Another point - the guitar tone and overall production "breathes" way too much to feel extremely contrived. It's not really overly artificial sounding, it actually has a naturally "big" sound, a bit fluffy, sure, but again, this is accessible stoner metal.

Other moments like the meandering grooves of 'The Horned Goddess' or the entirety of 'Lament For The Aurochs' (which is just too drawn out for this type of music, and recycles some riffs from previous songs) feel more "autopilot" but they can't really drag Age Of Winters down to earning a mediocre score because the overall sound is that of enjoyable, above average stoner stuff. Hip or not, I don't really care, and this long after the album's release it'd be trivial at best to complain that this sort of thing was hip when it came out.

And that last comment really sums up my feelings toward The Sword. Someone sometime somewhere decided this band is a cancerous trend to metal music and just like the supposed trend they were sworn against, it became a trend to hate these guys. And Age Of Winters is a decent candidate to direct all that flak towards because it's not as mature in terms of writing as The Sword's next couple albums. Whatever man. If these guys had signed to a cult doom/stoner record label like Rise Above you same doom-loving detractors would eat it up, because this album isn't really too far out of place alongside Orange Goblin, Electric Wizard, Witchskull, Witchcraft, or Beastmaker albums. Hell it's even got a similar feel to some of Cathedral's more upbeat albums like "Carnival Bizarre". Honestly, even the cover art for Age Of Winters has the same colorful and relatively classy stoner vibe to it, in the sense that you're getting enjoyable Sabbathian grooves.

Rating: 8.3 out of 10