The Sword @ The Barfly
July 05 2010 @ The Barfly, Camden.
Gentleman’s Pistols; terrible name, awful, awful band. Not terrible in a musically inept way, they were perfectly competent which brings with it the appalling implication that they’ve consciously chosen to sound like a band from the fag end of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal when the tide was going out. I know The Sword themselves are not what you would call original but they add something of their own to the template from which they start, these guys take something away. I imagine if I had been drunker I may have found them funnier, but I wasn't and all I have is bewilderment that people can make a living doing this.
So, let’s not dwell on them and move on to the main event.
The Sword are awesome. This is a statement of fact. Yes, they only really have three songs; the one that sounds like Black Sabbath, the one that sounds like early Metallica and the one that sounds like Black Sabbath being covered by early Metallica, but that doesn’t matter because they do it so very, very well and so very, very loud and in the intimate confines of Camden’s Barfly that translates in to an intense experience of epic proportions.
I have been going to this gig for twenty years. The bands change and the faces change, well, most of them anyway, but essentially the heavy metal gig has remained the same for all of my lifetime, the sweating pit, the thundering riffage and throbbing bass and yet rarely has it been so utterly thrilling as tonight. These boys know how to rock and it just doesn’t stop. Wave after wave of brutal, crushing sound comes crashing down from the stage and the crowd respond accordingly, thrashing themselves in to moshpit frenzy.
They crank out a few new songs tonight, only once do they stray from the formula in to territory that sounds disturbingly like Aerosmith, but mostly it’s solid gold thunder ‘hits’ like ‘Freya’, ‘To Take The Black’ and ‘The Horned Goddess’ that have the sweaty masses shouting along as they try to tear each other asunder.
As a reviewer, these are the moments we live for. When all the standing around through tiresome support bands becomes worthwhile. It is these moments of glorious intensity that remind us that it is good to be alive. This is what The Sword do, it’s not particularly clever but it certainly is very big and utterly magnificent.