Last Night: The Sword at Fitzgerald's

By Craig Hlavaty Wed., Dec. 19 2012 at 1:00 PM

Categories: Last Night, Live Shots

Continued from page 1

The Sword's live show is still very much based around 2006's Age of Winters -- at least for the crowd, it seems, though their past three albums including this year's Apocryphon are worthy headbangers.

The opening set-list attack of "Apocryphon," "Freya" and "Hammer of Heaven" locked fans in for the night. I really dig the synth arrangements for "Apocryphon" too, and hope they include weirdo things like that for the next album. At least when they do it doesn't sound wanky, either. Organs and synths are underused in metal, probably because few can pull it off without sounding wussified or reaching.

The band gets lost with the crowd during most passages, becoming a sort of metal jam band, as the smoke settles down and eyes begin to close. It's taken close to a decade for The Sword to get to that point, and it's been fun watching them mature into something beyond indie-metal (someone else's made-up catch-all term).

Personal Bias: I used to drive to Austin from Houston to see American Sharks play this hipster hovel called Creekside near Sixth Street maybe once a month. Austin is their true home, but they got a hometown welcome last night.

The Crowd: THESE.

Overseen In the Crowd: LOTSA BEARDS.

Random Notebook Dump: I have always wondered what kind of band The Sword would have been in the '70s, when a thunderous quartet like them would be playing arenas and selling black-light posters, headlining bills with Rush, and scaring the mothers of America.

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