The Sword - Gods of the Earth - Music & Performance - CD

Gods Of The Earth is a metal album through and through, from the title, to the cover -- a skeletal hand thrusting an enormous sword up through the ground, surrounded by scads of Led Zeppelin-style iconography -- to the song titles -- referencing classic heavy metal themes like Norse mythology ("The Frost-Giant's Daughter"), warfare ("The Black River"), science fiction (lead single "Fire Lances Of The Ancient Hyperzephrians"), and fantasy ( "To Take The Black," inspired by the novels of fantasy writer George RR Martin) -- to the music, which takes the rough, heavy crunch of '70s metal innovators like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and -- most importantly -- Black Sabbath and marries it to the twin guitar harmonies of NWOBHM stalwarts like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. There's even a touch of early '80s thrash, Metallica style, to offset any possible tendency of the riffs to turn to sludge.

But for all of the heavy metal influences that Gods Of The Earth wears proudly on its denim-jacketed, band-patch-covered sleeves, this album is not some soulless attempt to recreate the sound of a different time for the pleasure of the nostalgic set, or the smug actualization of the ironic crowd; it's a powerful, modern record in its own right. Whether it's singer/guitarist J.D Cronise's thin voice wailing above the chaos through the chorus of powerful paean "How Heavy This Axe," or the classic metal intro re-imagined in "Lords," or the thunderous epic majesty of an instrumental track in "The White Sea," Gods Of The Earth seizes your attention, bashes you over the head with a blunt object and makes you love every minute of it.