The Sword Takes Over The Waiting Room!

Story and Photos: Spencer Fleming

Catching up from a busy week and weekend over here. Last week I caught Sleep Token at the Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln (awesome show, no media unfortunately). Then, on Wednesday (10/1/25) Psych-rockers The Sword celebrated 15 years of their seminal album Warp Riders at the Waiting Room. When I arrived I found a coveted parking spot around the corner from the venue. This was quite the feat considering the Reverb had a really big hardcore show the same night. When I pulled up to the Waiting Room I was a bit surprised to see the place was absolutely packed. On a Wednesday?? What an awesome showing for Omaha's music scene.

The night started off with some grooving alternative rock from the band Pink Fuzz from Denver. They were down and got right to the point with their fuzzed out crunchy guitars. Bass player and vocalist LuLu had the coolest Rickenbacker which she plucked away laying down the low end. It was an awesome set! Pink Fuzz's new album Resolution is now streaming wherever you find music.

Next up was Rickshaw Billie's Burger Patrol, say that five times fast! These guys had a southern fried Primus vibe. With shredding guitars and lots of weedily weedilies it was fun on a bun. The crowd was digging them as well. I even saw a few people singing along with all of the chaos. They had some interesting merch too. With a name like that one would hope so.

Last up were the boys from Austin, TX, The Sword!! I was fairly unfamiliar with The Sword outside of their song "Freya" being a selection from the Guitar Hero series, but I got a quick education in the days leading up to the show. The band was on the road celebrating the 15th anniversary of their third album Warp Riders. The album is aptly named as the whole thing takes you on a warped trip through time and space. The chugging riffs and soaring harmonics will blow your mind! The band started out with a few cuts from the albums High Country and Used Future before diving headfirst into the Warped Riders album. By now the club was packed and starting to sweat! The Sword faithful showed up in a big way. The band gave the crowd all they had tearing through the Warped Riders album before dishing out a deep cuts "Farstar" and "Daugher of Dawn" before closing things out with you guessed it.... "Freya". The room exploded with energy and I'm sure a lot of us were brought back to our plastic guitar days when we would shred until our eyes would bleed. It was a great time!

Thanks so much to The Sword for photo access. Thanks for reading and we'll see you at the next one!