Experimentation and exploration in music are a must. God forbid current artists be met with the same outcry Bob Dylan received in 1965 upon releasing Bringing It All Back Home. Dylan's fans couldn't fathom their acoustic god going electric, and they booed him from the stands. Without musical experimentation the Beatles would have never cut The White Album, The Beastie Boys would have never gone hip-hop, and Kanye wouldn't have cut the forgettable 808s and Heartbreak on his way to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The case of Kanye proves timely as he possibly released 808s and Heartbreak a bit early in the experimentation process. Kanye may have wanted to hold all that down until he landed on something more profound. The same can be said of The Sword's newest release, High Country.
Bless The Sword's hearts: High Country is a boring record. The greatest thing to be said of High Country is its invitation to return to The Sword's earlier, heavier records. Unfortunately, a chronological listen through The Sword's discography attests their continual movement from darker, old-fashion doomy stoner sound, as on Age of Winters (2006), to more democratically commercial, southern hard rock, as can be heard to some degree already on Warp Riders (2010) and certainly, with an added tinge of blues guitar, on Apocryphon (2012). By this year's High Country, The Sword has morphed into a full-on non-metal pseudo-hard-rock southern jam band (trumpets?!), which, again, would be fine if they achieved more than an uneven tribute album to the '70s bands - less Sabbath and Sleep, more ZZ Top and Steve Miller - they've genuflected upon these past three years.
Nevertheless, High Country is not without it's high points. "Mist and Shadows" opens slowly on the rhythm of high-hats and field crickets, then evolves into the strongest blues riffs on the entire album. It's a sweaty track full of swagger and space synth, featuring J.D. Cronise's strongest vocal moments on the record. This bleeds into the short synth instrumental, "Agartha", that feels more giallo soundtrack than 70s southern pride. "Suffer No Fools" might be the stand out track, combining The Sword's classic thick, heavy crunches with bluesy string-bending solos, all of this propped against a wall of solid 70s synth. The track closes with a crowd in uproarious applause, as if the band knew this was the track holding the entire album together. "Suffer No Fools" reveals The Sword at the height of their experimentation, holding their gaze toward future potentials while keeping one foot firmly planted in their signature sound. "Turned To Dust", one of the album's final tracks, steals too much from AC/DC's "Hells Bells" in the opening to not raise eyebrows. Even after the really great tracks previously mention, "Turned To Dust" is an unfortunate closing track, reminding listeners that High Country reads more like a term paper leaning too heavily on credible sources rather than a bold, brash manifesto proclaiming where a legendary band could go next.
