2 out of 5

Label: Razor & Tie

Produced by: Bryan Richie

Many, many years ago, I read a review of a Sword album (I think in Magnet?) that had me slotting them in as super-heavy guitar slingers. For whatever reason, I didn’t get around to actually buying an album until High Country, which faced a mini-backlash from fans for being rather low-keyed 70s swaggered thing; more classic rock than Sabbath. That said, I enjoyed High Country – it’s nearly end-to-end solid, strollin’ anthems – but it likely tainted how I heard the group then, because even traveling back to previous releases, I continued to hear the group more as a long-haired dad rock variant, even when they were rockin’ the heavy heck out: their guitar interplay – slick and impressive – feels rather laid back, and John D. Cronise’s airy vocals and fantasy-tinged lyrics have never exactly matched their ‘doom’ metal tag.

So an acoustic take on select tracks from High Country didn’t necessarily catch me off guard. That’s just a step away from dad rock, after all, sitting around the campfire and strumming the acoustic guitar to tracks he used to play in his cover band. And while more nuanced ears and smarter reviewers have pointed out that these are definitely adaptations and not straight-up redos of ten of High Country’s tracks, I don’t feel that anything is added by pairing them down as such. The album’s best moments have some additional plugged-in zing (the rich Early Snow), and the hooks that hit are directly lifted from their distorted distorted brethren. Low Country definitely underlines the group’s inherent rootsiness (which, yeah, was definitely as its peak on HC), but it also strips things of punch and energy, rendering fun tracks into… very generic ones. Cronise’s voice is much more at home here, this is just too hackey-sack peace-circle for me, with few moments to differentiate this seasoned band from a one-off set of dudes and guitars and jamz.