THE SWORD | Age of Winters (Kemado)
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But this isn’t to suggest that Age of Winters isn’t also overwhelmingly, unironically satisfying. A template is a template because it works, after all, and the Sword are paint-by-numbers artists of the highest order. “Barael’s Blade” is a punishing exercise in guitar gymnastics, a quick kick in the teeth after the album’s dirgelike instrumental opener, “Celestial Crown,” puts you half to sleep. The eight-minute epic “Lament for the Aurochs” doesn’t seem to have a hell of a lot to do with the extinction of the wild European ox, but it intermittently approaches the demented grandeur of “Fairies Wear Boots.” And “Ebethron,” with its roiling, hyperexcessive drum solo, is like a belch from the bowels of Sauron or Demogorgon or . . . whoever was supposed to be the most evil. This record is to metal what whomping somebody with a tree branch is to hand-to-hand combat–not even remotely original, but brutally effective all the same. –Brian McManus
I find the absence of female contributors hard to countenance, though–there are 13 acts on the disc, and the only woman named in the credits is Rosie Thomas, who sings backup with Sufjan Stevens. Fahey’s technique has inspired a number of women–Gillian Welch leaps to mind, as does LA folk songwriter Alicia Bay Laurel, who learned open-tuned guitar directly from Fahey in her teens. But this oversight, as disappointing as it is, can’t sink I Am the Resurrection–it provides a rich and imaginative variety of interpretations, not carbon-copy covers by artists too afraid to tinker with their hero’s masterpieces. –Mia Lily Clarke
