This album will make or break The Sword. Warp Riders is the band’s third album, and in recent times they have slowly positioned themselves to be at the forefront of a change in the more the “traditional” side of metal. A few ago I was deafened by the band who were on tour with Saviours — another excellent riff based band. It was a co-headline tour and at that time I took The Sword’s place in the “retro-metal” hierarchy at face value, with both bands being on par with each other. However, the differences in exposure between the two bands is obvious. In the case of that track from Guitar Hero II, it has certainly helped them — with a myriad of young guitarists posting their versions of The Sword tracks on youtube (even for ‘Tres Brujas’) — but more so it was the first slot on the gigantic World Magnetic Metallica tour, and recently supporting the Dark Lord Ozzy Osbourne. It is these high profile support slots that have maintained the link with the fans across the globe.

This album is the Austin TX quadruplet’s first concept album, inspired by 70s and 80s sci-fi in both print and animated film, along with “old Heavy Metal magazines”. Previously, only a handful of tracks were directly inspired by works of fiction (‘The Frost-Giant’s Daughter’, ‘To Take the Black’, and ‘The Black River’ from 2008’s Gods of the Earth), but this album sees the band compose around an original story penned by guitarist/vocalist J.D Cronise. A primitive hunter named Ereth, banished from his tribe to the planet Echeron (a planet divided by darkness and light) discovers an ancient device (the Orb) once owned by a sorcerer of a bygone era — the Chronomancer. The scientist enlists Ereth in a quest to restore the planet’s balance and for him to escape a cataclysmic event by fleeing into the future. Along the way, Ereth encounters various obstacles including witches (‘Tres Brujas’), androids (‘Arrows in the Dark’), trippy plants, intergalactic armadas, and a crew of space pirates with a vessel known as The Sword. Cronise has recently said that there are semi-conscious attempts to compare the life in a touring band with the crew of a spaceship: “time doesn’t seem to pass at the same rate; you crawl into your sleep chamber in once place and wake up somewhere else far away.” At this point you could question the sanity of Cronise, but I am struggling to think of many bands who attempt to inject intense touring schedules into a concept album in this way.

Whereas Age of Winters was a rather one dimensional and Gods of the Earth a little patchy during the second half, Warp Riders is much more of a concentrated effort. It also marks a new direction from the band, taking in more traditional elements of 80s and 90s rock/metal within the songwriting, but also with the sound of the album. The tempos vary from thrashing Saviours to Thin Lizzy esque hard rock on ‘Lawless Lands’, and the band more importantly take a step back from the cognitive overload from the various layers of guitar. For the most the two guitarists of Cronise and Kyle Shutt concentrate on think powerchords (with a few huge open ones for good measure) and intricate licks. It will turn heads, but not because of a different take on retro-metal, but because The Sword, once regarded as a gateway band to doom metal have now released a solid hard rock/metal album. It packs a huge amount of overdriven punch with unusual amount of melody for the band.

The opener ‘Acheron/Unearthing the Orb’ muscles its way through with a hefty dose stacatto power rock and transgresses into the single ‘Tres Brujas’. In the past, Cronise has been criticised for, well, his “poor singing”, but this could be the album to shake that off his back. It is certainly more melodic, but sometimes Cronise lets loose an almost Ozzy sounding croon. There are almost elements of early-mid-metallica hidden in here, from the thrashy Ride The Lightning sounds to the end solo to ‘Astraea’s Dream’ which sounds incredibly similar to the Kirk Hammet’s solo on ‘Wherever I May Roam’. But amongst this are a few tracks with a heavier feel to them, such as the slower intro riffs and chunky open E riffing to ‘The Chronomancer III: Nemesis’. This more mature writing style adds a tremendous amount of dynamism to their overall sound, and the guitar lead work is also the best I have heard the band play. The Sword have side-stepped the company of bands such as Witchcraft to artists such as Priestess, and this “new” sound (and pretty sure still tuned down to C), will take a few existing fans by surprise.