THE SWORD: 'High Country' Album Cover Unveiled; Title Track Streaming

Austin, Texas metal luminaries THE SWORD will release their new album, "High Country", on August 21 via Razor & Tie. Recorded in Austin, the CD was produced by Adrian Quesada and mixed by J. Robbins.

"High Country" features 15 new compositions and will be released simultaneously in CD and double vinyl formats. It will be available today for preorder through Razor & Tie as well as the band's merch site. Access to both preorders is at www.theswordofficial.com. The Razor & Tie preorder includes multiple bundles featuring double colored vinyl, cassettes, three t-shirt designs, a hoodie, as well as a lithograph of the album art. The CD and double vinyl can also be preordered as standalone pieces. The band's preorder features one bundle which includes the CD, an exclusive double colored vinyl with earth and sky printing, a custom engraved and numbered stash box with album art featured on the inside the of the lid, a custom shredder card, a custom packet of rolling papers, and a custom engraved dugout.

"High Country" track listing:

01. Unicorn Farm
02. Empty Temples
03. High Country
04. Tears Like Diamonds
05. Mist And Shadow
06. Agartha
07. Seriously Mysterious
08. Suffer No Fools
09. Early Snow
10. The Dreamthieves
11. Buzzards
12. Silver Petals
13. Ghost Eye
14. Turned To Dust
15. The Bees Of Spring

The "High Country" title track can be streamed at www.theswordofficial.com.

In conjunction with the release of "High Country", THE SWORD will embark on a 25-show European tour. The trek begins on release day, August 21, at the Pstereo Festival in Trondheim, Norway and ends in Bristol, U.K. on September 19. The band will be touring throughout the remainder of 2015 and 2016.

Asked by Radio Cannon in a 2014 interview how he feels the metal scene has evolved since THE SWORD started, the band's guitarist, Kyle Shutt, said: "It's funny, because I think when we started people reacted differently to us because the metal scene was dominated by these macho, wrestler-looking types, screaming at you, etc… And bands like that are dying out. It's becoming a lot more rock 'n' roll. And I also notice that heavy metal journalism in the last ten years is so much more positive compared to when we started. It was so negative back then. And you gotta have haters, you know what I'm saying? It's just that there used to besome serious debates about us on message boards where people would try to figure out what we did and have these crazy theories that we were like, this pre-packaged band. It was so hateful for no reason, and nowadays people are so much more accepting. I think music just got so terrible for a while and so many shitty bands got shoved down people's throats by record labels throwing money at record stations and I think people just started looking past the bullshit and are much more open-minded now, with awesome bands like GRAVEYARD and BOMBUS. Or AMERICAN SHARKS, from Austin. Just cool heavy bands getting exposure."