IN REVIEW: The Sword - "Used Future"

Finding themselves among the most revered modern metal bands following their arrival just over a decade ago, The Sword had started taking tentative steps away from their thick and furious sound by the time their spacey third album Warp Riders was released in 2010. Then, after a fourth album sought to marry their early bombast with a more assured and modern slickness, the Austin group decided to dive headfirst into classic rock nostalgia with fifth album High Country in 2015. Many fans recoiled at the shift into lighter territory and, although the attempt was noble, the album as a whole proved to come up short on memorable tunes.

Fast forward three more years, and Used Future more or less picks up where High Country left off, albeit with more of a flair for the dramatic. To wit, the instrumental passages are more expansive and more plentiful; whereas High Country featured 11 songs and 4 instrumentals, Used Future has just 7 songs and 6 instrumentals (including three of the album's five opening tracks). There are cinematic flourishes thrown in, with keyboards and strings used in an attempt to compliment the album's core aesthetic, which only kind of recalls the space-rock departure of Warp Riders. However, whereas that album maintained the intensity and electricity of the band, this one filters the sci-fi through the band's more recent forays into classic rock. The result bears traces of the band that used to slash and burn their way through their hard fantasy rock, but with the fire and fury sucked out of the guitars; if you can picture Steve Miller subbing in for Tony Iommi on a Black Sabbath tour that also sees Black Sabbath subbed out for ZZ Top, you're starting to get the idea.

Look, like on High Country, there's nothing on Used Future that's truly cringe inducing or objectively bad, aside from a few silly lyrical passages; the problem I (and many longtime listeners) have with this record and this band in recent years is that the force they once conjured up has more or less gone missing. Pummeling riffs are replaced with lazy Southern licks, those thick grooves jettisoned in favour of laid back melodies; put another way, much of the band's power has been diminished over the years but they've yet to find the impassioned performance, the refined confidence or, really, anything of real substance to put in its place.

While there's certainly nothing wrong with a band exploring lighter territory, Used Future does mark The Sword's second album traveling down this path, which leads me to believe this is where they're choosing to go now; and good for them, it's their right to do so. However, such a marked and prolonged step away from the sound that built their fan base combined with a lack of material poised to reach new audiences (not to mention the reliance on interludes and instrumentals perhaps masking a lack of ideas) makes chances of The Sword's future success pretty bleak indeed.

March 23, 2018 • Razor & Tie
Highlights Twilight Sunrise • Sea of Green • Used Future