Live By The Sword - The Glorious Dead E.P.

Rebellion Records

 

Live By The Sword is undoubtedly one of my favorite bands of the past five or six years. All their releases have been consistently in – or at – the top of my yearly yearlist ever since the band’s formation in 2016 and all because of their brute and explosive mix of Oi! and various genres of the rock and metal spectrum! Top of the crop was of course last year’s “Exploring Soldiers Rise” LP and just when you thought things couldn’t get any better, the Dutch-American alliance releases its brand new EP “The Glorious Dead E.P.”!

 

Now I wouldn’t directly say that this EP trumps last years full-length album, because it’s basically just a little taste of things to come (a new album - “Cernunnos” - has been announced for March 2023). But the three new songs, a cover of “The Green Fields Of France” and a re-recording of the previously released “Into A New Dark Age” simply sound amazing, instantly making “Cernunnos” one of my most anticipated records of 2023!

 

But with that being said, it’s easy to conclude that “The Glorious Dead E.P.” is a true piece of art (both musically and visually) and one of Live By The Sword’s most intense releases to date! Not just because the newly acquired drummer Sander van Baalen (The Devil’s Blood) delivers nothing but fire on some of the band’s heaviest work to date in the form of “Sacrifice” (which was written by Richard Walker of British doom outfit Solstice) and In Memoriam (the double bass on both songs is ridiculously sick!), but also because this EP includes not one, but two acoustic tracks.

 

Of course there is the previously mentioned “Into A New Dark Age” (which originally appeared on “Exploring Soldiers Rise”), which was transformed into a beautiful acoustic track just for this release and the all new “The Glorious Dead”, which happens to be the title-track of this little disc. I absolutely love its dark folk-ish vibe and I wouldn’t mind more tracks like this in the future, but nonetheless I am curious how this song will sound if the band goes all out! Hopefully I’ll find out sooner than later!

 

The CD version of “The Glorious Dead E.P.” is already out and limited to just 200 copies, while the vinyl version is obviously a little later due to the increased turnaround times, but should be available by the end of the month (November 2022). A must-have either way!