Before, every song was a dark, densely-instrumented blast of crazy riffs and jarring vocals courtesy of singer/guitarist JD Cronise. With Warp Riders, though, The Sword has really honed in on rhythm and precision, something that I thought was lacking from their past records. They opened for Metallica on their 2008 US tour, and had a song ( Freya, off of Age of Winters) featured in one of the Guitar Hero games.

The Sword, a heavy metal band out of Austin, Texas, have, on their previous two records, released collections of unbridled heathenry in the form of sludgy, Sabbath-esque aural assaults about things like Vikings, “HyperZephyrians”, wolves, wizards, and other such mystical creatures. Throw your bubblegum pop records and AutoTuned commercial jingle music into the trash bin and get your grubby mitts on this behemoth of a record right now. This record, folks, is the answer to that question. It is my hope that these future beings (Giant slugs? Dogs walking on two feet?) will be able to sift through the detritus of today’s “popular” music to find what we REALLY were (or should have been) listening to. Musically speaking, when they unearth that ancient relic of yesteryear, I hope they find a copy of The Sword’s new album Warp Riders, which was released this week.

Sometime in the distant future, when the world is overrun with strange creatures, thoughts are currency and humans are a thing of the past, I imagine some curious young slug/cat/robot/(enter future species here) will stumble upon some sort of 2010 time capsule, giving the futuristic society a glimpse of what we were like today.

A wizards lizard soul warp