THE SWORD - Warp Riders

As someone who enjoyed a fair bit of metal as a teenager, the current so-called "hipster metal" trend has been both vindicating and a little strange. While it's amazing to have so many embrace the pleasures of bands like Mastodon, Baroness and High On Fire, it's not as though these bands are really doing anything all that different from the bands that preceded them. But if you can get beyond the "cart before the horse"-ness of having these bands on one's iPod and no Judas Priest or Iron Maiden, then it still adds up to metal being taken seriously—respect a whole host of these bands deserve.

Austin, Texas' The Sword are just such a current band, combining the modern evolution of stoner rock with a sound that pulls from all the best mid-tempo moments of Ozzy and Metallica. There's witches and weed and a loose concept about a man on a temporal dimension journey of some kind, but you don't really need to worry yourself about that. It's all just fantastical set-dressing for what The Sword do best: rock the hell out. This band is tight, fierce, and nicely melodic when it needs to be. But maybe its best attribute is the one thing that seems a little plain at first—its singer. J.D. Cronise's voice isn't much to look at until you realize what a nice change it is to hear a modern metal band with a guy who doesn't scream his way through every second line.

Mastodon's last album, the super-sick Crack The Skye, picked up on this virtue to great effect, and it's nice to say that The Sword have been way ahead of the curve on this one. The dude just sings in a laidback Texan drawl, suggesting that ZZ Top have as much of a role to play in their sound as Sabbath, Slayer, or Pantera. Aside from that small touch, The Sword play it straight and classic, and why not? It's metal, it's got an awesome van-worthy album cover, and it rocks. Public tastes may change, but this type of music has always worked for the same simple reasons.