The Sword have been tearing up Europe and the United States in support of their latest album, High Country, for much of 2015. The Austin, TX-based metal band will kick off the next leg of its American tour this Wednesday (Nov. 18), when they head to One Eyed Jacks in New Orleans. I caught up with lead guitarist, singer and songwriter J.D. Cronise to discuss the tour, the stylistic changes that came with the new album, the state of hard rock music today and more.

How have the shows in support of High Country been going? Have you been fitting a lot of the new material? Has it been a mix of old and new?

It’s a lot of new material. In the past, we’ve always to play “the greatest hits” sort of sets, trying to take equal amounts from each album. But at this point, we’re a little more comfortable playing the newer stuff. It’s more what we’re feeling these days.

Do you guys have any particular history with New Orleans?

We’ve always had great shows there. We’ve been coming there for years and years, since we started pretty much, being that we started in Texas just next door. Yeah, it’s New Orleans. It’s a great music town just like Austin and we always have a great time.

A lot of critics and fans say that the new album marked a pretty big stylistic change for you guys. Would you agree with that assessment? How has the response been on your end?

I guess that I would agree with that, somewhat. If people look back on our old records, I think this sort of sound was always foreshadowed. It may be a little bit more of a sharper turn than any previous records. But we’ve always tried to change it up a little bit. We’re just kind of at the point, ten years in, where we just thought we really needed to mix it up, and not just continue our trajectory. We need to keep it interesting for us as musicians.

What do you think of the state of hard rock and metal music these days? Where do you think the genre is going and where do you think it is?

I don’t know, it’s pretty interesting. There’s very unexpected–at least for me–trends going on. I don’t know where it’s going. We live in a very hard-to-predict time period, especially when it comes to media and how things are going to work going forward. But there’s definitely a lot of very good bands around, that’s for sure. But you might have to dig a little bit more to find them. That seems to be, unfortunately, one of the problems with the Internet as well. It’s something that can help some people but somehow, because there’s so much going on and so much is out there, there’s a lot of very good stuff that sometimes gets ignored, overlooked and buried in the sea of stuff. It also make for easier access, but it just makes it this whole process of finding a needle in a haystack that’s getting bigger. That being said, there’s a lot of really good bands around now. For a while there in the early 2000, there was maybe a little bit of a low when things had fallen into certain trends. It’s definitely changed a lot since then and, like I said, in ways that I didn’t expect.

Every so often I read a new piece by some music journalist that is trying to say that guitar-driven music is dead or that guitar-driven music is not going anywhere. It just never really seems to be the case though.

It’s definitely happening to rock music of all kinds. It’s becoming, in our culture, more a like jazz these days. And I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s this sort of thing where it appeals to a certain listener. It doesn’t necessarily appeal to everyone anymore. Whereas at one point, a guitar anthem on the radio appealed to a mass market. These days, that is a smaller audience. But the audience is no less into it. I think in some ways that can really help the craft, and make people to have to work hard to get noticed.

What’s in store for you guys after you wrap up the tour and the album cycle? Will you be hitting the studio after? Or maybe taking a break?

That’s been the way it works. We never consciously plan that far in advance, from one album to the next. Right now we just put out a new record and we’re still on tour for that. We’ll probably do more touring for it in the springtime. We’ll see what happens after that.

The Sword will perform at One Eyed Jacks on Wednesday, November 18. Tickets for the show are still on sale.