So Heavy It's Speechless: "The Sundering" - The Sword - 2008

So I'm late to The Sword. Way late. I just landed Warp Riders a few weeks back and finally got Age of Winters and Gods of the Earth. Dropping Gods... in first, I cannot get past the brief instrumental opener, "The Sundering." It is exceedingly rare that I start a track and rewind (for lack of a better term) before it's over for another listen.  If there's something negative to be said about The Sword it has to be that man has yet to invent a volume knob that will turn far enough clockwise to do their music justice.

It is with tracks like these that I get particularly obsessed with little bits. In the case of "The Sundering" it's the descending lick that comes between 0:42 and 0:44. Two seconds that look like this...

Bb ----------------------------------------
F  -11-13-11-10-11-10-8-10-8-7-8-7------
C  ----------------------------------------

...and that, simple as it is, will somehow take me hours to master.

This is two minutes of perfection. Two minutes of hope yet for rock and roll.