Main Street Magazine Spring '23

Doom. A subgenre of metal whose name is what it aims to evoke.
Slower speeds, lower tuning, and a sound thick enough you could
cut it with a knife. And with doom comes stoner. A combination of
doom, psychedelic, and acid rock, stoner is what you get when all
the doom and gloom require a reprieve. Heavy on the distortion,
heavy on the bass, and heavy on the groove. But it is the contextual
and lyrical content that draws some to these genres. Occultism,
fantasy, dread, and, sometimes, lore — grand tales woven through
the albums. Found on these pages are three of these tales, three
stories of distant lands, unforgiving landscapes, great knowledge,
loss, and love. I hope these scrawls are one day found so that I may
share these sonic landscapes — though surely they have been if
you are reading this. I invite you to enter the Gateway and join me
on a brief journey through the tales these genres have to tell, now
immortalized in both sound and word.
The tides of Acheron have long ceased their movement — three
suns assault and scorch the lands of one side while the other exists
in cold, unending darkness. Ereth looks out at the unforgiving
wasteland; this landscape is now his to wander. A man banished,
the archer steps into a legend far greater than himself, an orb and
the words of three witches his only guide.
The Chronomancer’s existence is one of pain — a body of artificially
obtained immortality locks his soul to the mortal plane. To him,
time is meaningless — he has seen Acheron’s doom. His part to
play in this is soon approaching. He is not the only one removed
from time; The Warp Riders cross millennia in mere seconds,
traveling forwards but never back.
The Lady Astraea has slumbered for eons, but the Dawn Daughter’s
coming has been foretold and she will keep her promises. A war is
soon to break out, and they will all be caught in the middle of it.
Warp Riders, the third studio album from heavy metal band The
Sword, takes you on a ride through a landscape fraught with turmoil,
with catchy and heavy riffs that will have you wanting to headbang
your way through the day. Opening with the instrumental track
“Acheron/Unleashing the Orb” that sets the epic and otherworldly
atmosphere, each track manages to both string the album together
and have its own distinct sound, weaving a cohesive but complex
narrative. This isn’t the science fiction of pop culture; its lyrics and
themes are otherworldly and mythological. It’s time to join the Warp
Riders in their hard rock travels across the universe.
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