“In the lateness of the evening
In the quiet of the night
The emptiness can overwhelm you
Until it’s banished by the light”
From “Sea of Green” by The Sword
Kyle Shutt, guitarist and songwriter for the heavy metal band The Sword, has always been able to find full immersion in his music. “The music is my zen spot. Once we’re on stage—one, two, three, four go. I go into this timeless zone. Any time I go into the studio, I zone into this timelessness,” Shutt told me. “That’s all that’s important right then or there.
“That’s where I truly found my purpose—just being on stage entertaining people playing my guitar.”
This immersion began young. Shutt recalls watching music videos on MTV and pondering over the meaning of lyrics, “Growing up with MTV on the air … there were all these bands you could see—a whole f*cking movement with Lollapalooza . . . and Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill. You had to listen to the lyrics. I was always influenced by bands where you had to think about the lyrics. Long after the video for “Heart Shaped Box” was over you’d be thinking about it, like what the f*ck was that?”
Soon, Shutt discovered bands that played a more melodic type of metal music and he began playing this kind of music that inspired him. “When we started we were trying to be the band we wanted to see. Because metal at the time was just a bunch of pro wrestler dudes screaming in people’s faces, just super aggressive. We were always into the more melodic bands like The Melvins, Sleep, Cathedral and Orange Goblin—bands that could bring heavy power to melodic music without it being cheesy or operatic.”
And The Sword came screaming out of the gate in 2006 with their album Age of Winters. Blabbermouth raved “The Sword’s collective organ is charred with the ashes of hell’s fires, pumping the blood of virgins, and fueling a fucking doom-rock Sherman tank of inexorable riffing and ham-handed stoner genius.” And in 2008, heavy metal legend Metallica took notice, bringing The Sword on their world tour.
While Shutt was always able to find peace when actually playing music, the thrilling lifestyle around being a professional musician was not so stable or healthy. As The Sword spent the next ten years touring and recording, Shutt found that he turned to drugs and alcohol to manage the highs and lows of his new life. And when he came off the road, he found that the world looked very differently to him.
“Getting all of that life experience swirled into my brain. It creates this static that I try to channel out into what I do. I would get so jacked up on adrenaline and then use alcohol and drugs to come down off of it every night on tour. And then the next night you go to a higher extreme and then a lower extreme. By the end of it you’re ping ponging all over the charts. It’s kind of a Jekyll and Hyde thing —you’re the entertainer now. Sometimes you don’t know when to turn that off. So many years of drug and alcohol abuse and living like an animal on the road, you kind of turn into that,” Shutt recalled. “And that first night that you get home and you don’t get that adrenaline rush … you go to a very dark place. It was ten years before I could just stop a second and look back on the trail of destruction I’d left behind—relationships that crumbled, friendships that turned weird. Because people’s perception of you changed even though you feel normal—people you didn’t relate to before, you started relating to.
“When you start relating to Kiss songs, you really need to look at yourself.”
One of the factors that contributed to the ups and downs Shutt experienced was that as The Sword began to explore new musical directions, they found that critics and even some fans did not necessarily come along for the ride. While the band was excited to express music that reflected the changes that they had experienced in their lives, some people wanted them to conform to the sound on their previous album.
“The thing The Sword is known for is that you never know what we’re going to do next.
We used to be a lot more angry after going on tour for fucking ever. After spending my twenties in a van – you’re not the same person after that. The music we created has always been a reflection of who we were and the music we wanted created. That just changes over time. A lot of people get confused and don’t know what to think. Because yes we have these songs about Norse mythology and battlefields that we wrote 15 years ago but we’ve also gone on this crazy musical journey this entire time,” Shutt described. “Our fans get a certain feeling from when they discovered us. And if that’s where they discovered us that’s all they want to hear. When they put music on, they want it to escape or something.
“Once they’ve made up their mind about you, they don’t want to change it.”
Thus while The Sword felt like it was evolving musically, some fans who wanted the band to conform to a specific sound were devolving into hatred and expressing it online. “People just not liking your band because they needed something to hate. You think about people’s comments on the internet. And you say, ‘Oh, he’s complaining because we don’t sound like we used to.’ No, he got what he wanted. He wanted to complain. You’re not going to please him – he’s already pleased. He got what he wanted. You’re wasting your time thinking about those people,” Shutt explained. “Instagram is for people that really love shit. Facebook is for people that really hate shit. And Twitter users are indifferent and I love them for it. People live on the internet it’s a different world.
“Put that shit away man – just go outside.”
As time went on, The Sword has slowed down a bit in terms of the rigor of touring – going on the road for months as opposed to years at a time. Shutt sees this as a natural evolution of the band. Shutt described how Freddie Mercury of Queen and Ben Weinman of The Dillinger Escape Plan described how their careers changed as they got older.
“You can only do it for so long. It’s a young man’s game as Freddie Mercury said,” Shutt explained. “Ben from Dillinger just hung it up recently. I saw a quote from him that said, ‘Look I’m 40 years old and I just loaded up a van last night.
“‘Anyone who doesn’t understand that – f*ck you.’”
As The Sword’s schedule has settled down, Shutt has found coping mechanisms other than drugs and alcohol to manage the ups and downs of life as a musician. “Every time we make a record I purge. To replenish that, I fill up my brain with books, movies, f*cking video games … any kind of art or anything.”
And Shutt has recognized that even as people at times rage against the changes in The Sword’s musical direction, the true supporters of the band always come back. “I noticed with every album that came out – everyone who loved the previous album would hate the new one. Five years later they love what we did two albums ago,” he said. “It’s almost funny to me now because I know that’s just the cycle. Once you make a piece of art and put it out to the public, it’s up to them now to decide what it is. Over the years I’ve tried not to get so bent out of shape about it. I don’t have time for that. I’ve got time for fans and family.”
But don’t think that The Sword has gone soft. The band just released their sixth studio album, Used Future, and have embarked on the second leg of their North American tour. And to protect the “zen spot” that Shutt has found in music, he has resolved to be in it for the long haul. In fact, Shutt thinks about his music as a marriage of sorts. And it is definitely until death do us part.
“After you see so much, you begin to see what’s important about life … it all seems a little less important. But I guess that’s when you know whether you want to do it or not, because the idea of walking away from it is f*cking ridiculous. It’s the coolest job in the world. It takes a lot out of you and everything, and it will absolutely just wreck your life, but there’s nothing like it. Just traveling all over the world playing fucking shows doing whatever you want – that’s the fucking dream right there man.
“The only way truly to make it work is you have to marry that art.”
