Gods of the Earth

iTunes Review

Don't let the 33 second acoustic guitar intro on "The Sundering" fool you. The Sword still make the kind of soap-dodging, longhaired, proto-metal that would well accompany a Dungeons And Dragons game where every character suffers some kind of bludgeon-related death. The Austin, Texas quartet's sophomore effort isn't much of a departure from 2006's Age Of Winters, but this is hardly a bad thing. Fans of bands with guitars that are loud enough to peel paint off walls will be satiated in the aptly titled "How Heavy This Axe" (were the song's moniker not a rhetorical question, you could easily answer, "None. None More Heavy"). Intertwining guitar harmonies on "The Black River" and "The White Sea" sound more influenced by second wave British metal bands, but more riff-heavy numbers such as "Maiden, Mother & Crone" and the galloping adventure-rock of "Lords" beg for fanzines and bloggers to overuse the word "brutal" to describe music that instrumentally borrows from Celtic Frost, Leaf Hound and High On Fire. The reverberating vocals sound mined from early Pentagram records and of course, Ozzy-era Sabbath.