Atlanta three-piece Sword II have brought their DIY aesthetic and fierce individuality in abundance on their new album, Electric Hour. They talk about their home city, opening for Julie, and creating through adversity.

For a work so assured and certain in what it is conveying, Sword II’s Electric Hour was spawned from adverse circumstances. The Atlanta trio – formed of Mari González, Certain Zuko and Travis Arnold – spent some 14 months concocting the 10-pronged record, one which comes as their fullest, most cohesive artistic statement to date. 

They wrote and self-recorded, situated in a dilapidated rental house on a farm in the city. Clearly, the flooding basement and very real danger of electric shock only enhanced their musicality. The album is dense, thrilling and impactful from top to bottom, forged from an enduring personal and musical connection between the three members, all of whom bring their own sound and vision to the congregative sonic pot. 

There’s fuzzy rock, dreamy shoegaze, grizzly punk, theatrical pop, all condensed into a deft and daring oeuvre that bustles with atmosphere and personality. Vocally striking, lyrically encompassing, it’s a potent and powerful release from the contemporary kings of DIY creation. Below, the trio talk Atlanta, live shows, and the making of Electric Hour.

 Listen to the album…

Read the interview…

How did the band first come together? How did you land on the name Sword II?

Certain: We all met through DIY and punk music. Mari and I met when we were 16/17 at a house show. Then we met Travis through his punk band and Georgia State university. There was already a band called Sword so we had to be Sword II. A lot of people pronounce it “swordy” or “sword eye-eye” and some people say “sword 2” or just sword. Those are all acceptable. 

You were raised in Atlanta, a city with such a rich and influential music history. How does the city’s sound or energy influence this record?

C: I think being in Atlanta and making music, it’s so common for people to do everything DIY, way before “DIY” was a concept. I think it’s just sort of expected that when you start out you will throw a show where you do literally every single aspect of the creative process, like videos, photos, bringing speakers, making a flyer, making your own merch, etc. 

So we kinda came up around people with that mentality. Awful Records was really big when we were in high school. They were blowing up and doing shows in people’s backyards, shooting all their own videos, making their own flyers, dropping songs on soundcloud. Everything was all in-house. I was really inspired by what they created and how they did it. 

We are also really inspired by Atlanta bands like Deerhunter, Warehouse, Balkans, Omni, and this kind of angular guitar thing. This band Warm Red and Nurse, Atlanta punk bands, I listened to growing up. There was definitely an ATL-type sound with those artists.

T: We were blessed to have come up in a time when there were a lot more underground live shows happening, in any genre. There used to be way more rappers throwing underground shows, more DIY venues — the ATL hardcore scene was super lit. 

How do you see yourselves fitting into, or standing apart from, Atlanta’s current music scene?

T: There is a solid crew right now. It’s getting harder to do music here cuz of gentrification, but people are kind of getting crazier and more willing to just say fuck it and do something. And I feel like more local people are really participating as fans and dancers, which is important. We were really wrapped up in recording, but I’m excited to play a lot in the city now. Hopefully, we can crack some new spots.

Your studio, just down the road from Outkast’s legendary Dungeon Family base has become something of a DIY venue and community hub. How did that start, and what does it mean to you to hold a space for others?

Our old studio was down the street from the dungeon family house, and we used to do shows there sometimes too. Our new spot is still in the same neighbourhood though. Every time we have had a studio it was always at someone’s house, including now. Several bands practised there at different times, like Playytime, Upchuck, Stemlines, and our roommate Franki/e Consent also did shows there. There are people I’m probably forgetting too. I think having other bands and artists share the space where we also live has taught us a lot about communication and how to set boundaries. It’s like ok, can my friends’ band come and be loud as fuck for two hours and use the bathroom? We always find a way to make it work in a sustainable way. It’s actually not easy to do, but it’s taught us so much about how to live with other people. It’s not hard when everyone just says what they need and their boundaries. Within the boundaries is where the craziest experimentation and work can happen. 

You opened for the band Julie, what was that experience like? How did this opportunity come about? 

C: They are a great band. When Travis and I were watching them, we were like, This is better than MBV and Sonic Youth and Nirvana. They took it further. Their live show is incredible, just raw power. We had been friends with them online for years, since we first started releasing music. They’re very sweet, very smart people. Watching the crowd dance to them in Athens, it is actually like witchcraft how they move people with their music. I think that’s so important when you have half the population addicted to their phone and video games. These kids lose their minds at the shows; it’s so free. 

What can people expect from a Sword II live performance? Favourite live performance of yours so far?

On this next tour, it’s gonna be drama, and it’s gonna be loud. It’s gonna be like my fair lady meets the Sex Pistols meets Ziggy Stardust meets Hanataresh. 

Why did you decide to call your album Electric Hour? 

C: To us, the Electric Hour is many things. It’s the era we spent in our studio that was shocking us all the time. The electricity malfunction also fried the computer and hard drive with our music on it. But it’s also life; the one chance that we have, our brief time here to do something real. It’s also this era of digital surveillance and social control that we live in. Sometimes the world is so evil that it’s almost comical. Like, oh my God, I can’t believe they have these evil cameras everywhere, that the state is mass deporting people, that they’re using drones to kill people. So we were trying to feel all of those things, feeling their weight but also kind of laughing in its face. 

T: Our lives are so integrated with technology – it’s against our will, but we also choose to do it in ways. We are living in the most electric part of time, with all the technology around us, like cameras, phones. 

When working on the album, where did you look for inspiration? How was the process?

T: We take inspiration from everywhere. We were living in this tiny house with a farm behind it, and it was really beautiful. We’re in the South, so we’re always inspired by what’s going on here, whether we want to be or not. Our emotions played a huge role in the writing, more so than any specific musical influence or artist. We tried to use sounds that resonated with us emotionally rather than being too logical or analytical about what we wanted to make. 

C: I always read history articles on Wikipedia, and sometimes I will get lost reading about things like the 1910s in Albania. And I take inspiration from, like, the giant mountain of history that stands behind us and how many strange and weird possibilities there are for life. I was also really inspired by watching people fight the cops during the Gaza solidarity movement, with the encampment protests and other protests. 

M: I got super into glamour and theatre. Sweet charity, Chicago, anything Bob Fosse, Gena Rowlands in Opening Night. I think because the studio we recorded in was so uncomfortable and dingy, I got really fixated on the glamour and theatrics of performance, big pop vocals, drama, that vibe, in combination with the kind of busted space we were recording in. This whole idea of “the show must go on”… 

How does this album differ sonically or thematically from your last project?

C: This album, we used a ton of acoustic guitar sounds, a lot of 12-string acoustic guitar. We wanted to make something more sparkly than our last record and use a consistent palette of sounds. For me, what really defines this album vs our earlier music is that every song has harmonies and every song has a 12-string guitar or an acoustic guitar. Sometimes with our earlier music, we would make a whole new “sound” for each song, like different drums, different guitar sounds, and everything. Which was really fun, but it was cool to hone in on one palette and paint different pictures within that palette of sounds, especially using our voices a lot. We did a lot with distorting 12-string guitars, also, and a lot of different stuff with harmonies we hadn’t done before. 

T: This album is a lot more cohesive for sure. Spirit World Tour is kind of like a mixtape, almost, in comparison. We mixed SWT together with our friend Graham in the same room, and we were really hands-on with different effects, compressors, distortions, etc. But with Electric Hour, we left a lot of that side of it (effects, final production touches) to our friend Seb, who mixed this record. We didn’t want to spend eternity on effects and production as we did on the Spirit World Tour, which we worked on for 3 years. So it was nice to hand off the mixing completely to someone else who could help us actualise our vision. 

What did you listen to during the making of the album? 

M: Elyse Weinberg, Hermine, Dorothy Carter, Women, Tori Amos, Sweeney Todd

C: Cindy Lee, Marjorie WC Sinclair, Evanora Unlimited, Weyes Blood, a lot of Bollywood cassettes, Garba, Grystal Gale, Chuquimamani Condori.

What is your personal favourite track on the album?

M: I think my favorite track is disconnection. In each of our lives there was a lot of intensity and confusion during the recording process that I feel we were able to capture into the music. All of the vocals and a lot of the guitars in the master recording were first takes which is really rare for us, it’s easy for us to do like a hundred takes. 

T: “Violence of the Star”.

C: For me it’s “Sentry”. I feel like we combined the deep hits of shoegaze with this Neil Young sort of thing, and the vocals were really inspired by girl group harmonies, Britney Spears. We were trying to be pop but raw at the same time, I think it worked well.

What does success look like to you at this stage of your career?

C: Play really big, super dramatic, sexy shows. Look cunt on stage. Print one million zines to give to the kids. Maybe someone will start a riot at our shows, but that would be something completely out of our control or direction. We feel successful whenever people dance in the crowd. As much dancing as possible.

Words – Ben Tibbits