The Sword’s J.D. Cronise: ‘We’ve Played on Metallica’s Amps’

A while back, just before the release of 2008's 'Gods of the Earth,' Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich stumbled upon an up-and-coming metal band out of Austin, Texas called the Sword. He heard the band's first album, 2006's 'Age of Winters,' and was blown away by the doomy stoner metallers. So impressed, in fact, that he ended up booking the band as the opening act on its recent tours in Europe and its first U.S. tour in support of 'Death Magnetic' back in early 2009.

Sword frontman J.D. Cronise has done what many bands have only dreamed of doing, and he's still sort of recovering from the whole experience.

"It was pretty insane. Yeah, it was pretty crazy," Cronise tells Noisecreep. " I was watching television yesterday, and on this HD cable channel, they were playing a Metallica performance from this summer's Sonisphere, and I was thinking while watching that, 'Wow. We've been in Metallica's practice room and played on their amps. People would kill to do that.' I just don't think about it. It's just this weird bizarre experience that happened. But every once in a while, when you see them on TV, you realize, 'Wow, I was on tour with Metallica. S---.'"

The Sword hope to have their third album recorded in time for a spring release, and Cronise says the record will be heavy, with lots of guitar reverence and sci-fi inspired lyricism. It will likely feature several candidates for future installments of 'Guitar Hero.' After all, the band appeared on the second installment in the series, and the song 'The Black River' is a playable track in this year's 'Guitar Hero: Metallica.' Just don't expect old J.D. to play the game like mad.

"I've only played our song on 'Guitar Hero: Metallica' once," he explains. "Those games are cool for people who don't know how to play guitar, but especially when it's your song and you wrote it and can play it ... it kind of seems silly to play it on a video game. I played it and I thought our song was a lot more fun to play than some of the other stuff on there."