By Andrew Bansal
[Photos by Brad Worsham]
March 21st 2014, House Of Blues, Anaheim CA: Austin, TX riff worshippers The Sword are coming to the home stretch of their six-week headline North American headline tour, wherein they’ve been presenting a hefty dosage of material from their stellar latest album ‘Apocryphon’ along with a selection of tunes from the previous three albums. They played at the House Of Blues Sunset Strip as main support to Clutch last November and this time they visited the House Of Blues Anaheim in Downtown Disney with support acts Big Business and O’Brother.
Doors opened at 7 on this typically crowded Friday evening in Disney, and the show started promptly at 8 PM with Atlanta, GA’s O’Brother taking the stage for a 30-minute set. The quintet presented a minimalist, downcast and low-energy style of psychedelic/ambient rock. The music they were portraying was by no means everyone’s cup of tea but was certainly interesting and came across as something that’s not very common in the heavy music realm. Interspersed with the dreamy, ambient passages, they also had some faster, heavier segments, specially the closing song of the set which had additional percussion. The crowd was very quiet during their set but gave the band a generous round of applause when they finished their set and departed the stage. Their music might be a little too experimental for some people, but is worth a listen for whose who like to explore.
Visit O’Brother on the web:
OBrotherMusic.net
facebook.com/OBrotherMusic
twitter.com/OBrotherMusic
instagram.com/OBrotherMusic
Next up, Los Angeles-based stoner rock trio Big Business hit the stage and changed the vibe completely with 40 minutes of their loud, bombastic, no-frills brand of rock. The guitarist and bassist combined to deliver vocals in unison, with the drummer also chipping in with some vocals during the set, and together the three took this House Of Blues by storm with their simple, high-impact tunes that were largely laden with crisp guitar and bass tones, big riffs and powerful drum fills. Big Business have been in existence as a band for almost a decade now. Originating in Seattle, they relocated to Los Angeles in 2006 and have called it home since then. The plethora of musical talent in this city never ceases to amaze me, and the sheer crushing force of this Big Business performance, a band I wasn’t previously aware of, once again proved that no one can ever be a know-it-all in this city, and there will always be great, undiscovered bands. To naysayers that deride the LA scene with statements like ‘The scene is dead’, and ‘There are no good new bands anymore’, all I’d say is, go to a Big Business show.
Visit Big Business on the web:
BigBigBusiness.com
facebook.com/BigBigBiz
twitter.com/BigBigBiz
Tour Set List:
01. Chump Chance
02. No Vowels
03. Battlefields
04. Trees
05. Aurum
06. Doomsday, Today!
07. Heavy Shoes
08. Lonely Lyle
This show moved along very swiftly, and before anyone even realized it, the clock struck 9:45 and the time had come for The Sword‘s arrival onto this stage. The turnout at the venue looked grim and thin at the start of the evening, but it was great to see that the place filled out rather nicely by the time The Sword were ready to begin their set. As they stood behind the curtain and did their line check, they played the opening riff of the Black Sabbath classic ‘Into The Void’, which instantly drew a raucous cheer from the audience and set the mood for the show. Their performance at the LA House Of Blues last November wasn’t quite up to my expectation and left a lot to be desired, but they made amends for it in an emphatic manner with this set, playing as many as seven songs from their latest masterpiece ‘Apocryphon’, along with nine other tunes from a combination of the ‘Age Of Winters’, ‘Gods Of The Earth’ and ‘Warp Riders’ albums.
As soon as The Sword’s set began, the marijuana puffs started rising up to infiltrate the Disney air, the beers flowed and the circle pits were kicked into motion. LA/OC’s stoner rock faithful had turned up in good numbers to support this show, and The Sword definitely provided them with a soundtrack to an enjoyable evening. In all fairness, ‘Apocryphon’ isn’t really a ‘new’ album anymore, having been out since October 2012, as was evident from the response the Apocryphon material got from the fans, many of them knowing the words to the seven songs chosen to represent the album. Each of these seven songs sounded fanatstic but ‘The Hidden Masters’ ‘Execrator’ and the title track stood out as the best ones in this live setting. Despite them playing such a huge chunk of the album, the song ‘Dying Earth’ was a surprising omission. But as expected, the mosh pits, head banging and crowd surfing amongst attendees intensified for the older material, and the band managed to put forth a solid encapsulation of their musical career in this 75-minute set.
Performance-wise The Sword were spot on, and aside from the band’s excellent-as-usual musicianship on their respective instruments, JD Cronise’s vocal delivery, the weak link at the aforementioned Clutch show, was on-point as well. This band has steadily climbed up the ladder of success in the ten years of their existence while commendably sticking to their musical principles all along the way, and adorers of the power of the riff will hope for The Sword to carry on in a similar manner for several more decades. With this tour they might well be on the last rites for the Apocryphon cycle, which means they’ll soon be working on new material and their next album is something every heavy rock fan would look forward to.
In comparison to their previous headline gigs in LA/OC, this was by far the best show they’ve played, and the state-of-the-art sound quality here at the House of Blues Anaheim had a part in it as well. In conclusion, a rifftastic show for one and all.
Check out more photos from the show below (view them here if you’re on a non-Flash device):
Visit The Sword on the web:
SwordOfDoom.com
facebook.com/TheSwordOfDoom
twitter.com/TheSword
instagram.com/SwordOfDoom
Set List:
01. Cloak Of Feathers
02. How Heavy This Axe
03. Tres Brujas
04. Winter’s Wolves
05. Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians
06. Freya
07. Arcane Montane
08. The Hidden Masters
09. Eyes Of The Stormwitch
10. Astraea’s Dream
11. Execrator
12. The Chronomancer II: Nemesis
13. The Veil of Isis
14. Apocryphon
Encore:
15. Barael’s Blade
16. Lords
Visit House Of Blues Anaheim on the web:
facebook.com/HOBAnaheim
twitter.com/HOBAnaheim
instagram.com/HOBAnaheim
Remaining Tour Dates:
3/22 – Phoenix AZ – Crescent Ballroom *
3/23 – Albuquerque NM – Launchpad +
3/24 – El Paso TX – Lowbrow Palace +
* = w/ Big Business & O’Brother
+ = w/ O’Brother