The Sword guitarist Kyle Shutt has spoken on the band’s recent decision to go on hiatus. Last month the band issued this brief statement, which read:
“After 15 years of nonstop recording and touring, The Sword will take a hiatus following their U.S shows at the beginning of October. The Australian tour scheduled for the end of October has been cancelled. The band apologizes to their Australian fans, but feel it is time for a breather.”
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In a new interview with The Austin Chronicle, Shutt spoke out about the matter, offering:
“Personally, I’m really bummed about it. I’ve been in the band since I was 20 and I’m 35 now. It’s not the end… I don’t think. I hate to get into it, because it wasn’t 100 percent my choice, but it did seem like the best option if we were able to continue at some point in the future.
It’s no secret that the vocal minority on Facebook says, “I just want the first three albums!” For us, it’s just like, “Yall, if you expect the same thing over and over again, we are not your band! I don’t know if you’ve been listening the last 15 fuckin’ years!”
We started The Sword because there was no band like that. Then all these Johnny-come-lately motherfuckers started doing half-assed versions of what we were doing 12 years ago and it became so watered down that we wanted to grow out of that and push the genre into different directions. Especially with High Country, I wanted to do a dance pop song and I wanted to do some really mellow shit.
On that last tour, we were better than we’d ever been, but there were half as many people at the clubs. Most bands would kill to play to 200 people, but when you used to play to 500, it creates a weird energy.
With that and the music industry being even further down shit creek than when we started, it was the perfect storm for us to be like, “Fuck this shit, let’s just put it away for a while and come back to it when people wake the fuck up.”
Shutt himself has since shifted his focus to an upcoming solo album, which he is currently crowdfunding, having raised $17,350 of his $30,000 goal as of press time.
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