the sword is derivative crap. if anyone wants to educate themselves they could read False Metal:
The Financial and Farcical Return of Heavy Metal. for the lazy, start on page 5 where The Sword is covered.

Obviously, it was time for Cronise to readjust, retrench and retrend. Too late out of the gate with The Ultimate Dragons to reap the fruits of the '70s stoner rock revival and the retro-garage tidal wave as a Peabody, Cronise decided to try his hand at metal by writing some songs echoing the current red-hot band in indie circles-and The Sword was born. High on Fire was on everyone's lips in the indie circuit, so Cronise broke out Sleep's Holy Mountain and Surrounded by Thieves and stitched together uninspiring, derivative songs which sounded like one long mash-up of "Dragonaut" and "The Yeti" with a dashes of Remission and Blast Tyrant thrown into the mix. Then Cronise recruited a band willing to play his music and make themselves over into superficial metalllers in a cosmetic process mapped out by Austin's Glide Magazine: "This time last year, Cronise, guitarist Kyle Shutt, bassist Bryan Richie, and drummer Trivett Wingo were rocking shorter 'dos here in River City. Now, the locks are longer, facial hair more abundant." At this point, more and more indie rockers were becoming aware of Relapse metal, and the trend reached a critical mass in early 2005, when a manufactured movement by hip industry insiders was ready to be rolled off the assembly line:

Mastodon's 2004 opus, Leviathan, single handedly broke down the barriers between the sanctified world of metal purists and loitering indie types. Diversity really can blur divisions musical temperaments and social spheres, though doing so requires a delicate hand.
Out in the hip hinterlands, Columbus Alive's Mahssa Taghinia was only now discovering the trend that Surrounded by Thieves and Remission had jump started as it grew in scope, but in Austin, Cronise and others had seen the hand writing on the wall much earlier, and The Sword caught the ear of some kindred industry souls who were using a "delicate hand" to make indie-hipster metal a viable genre.