Sword II

Atlanta-based three-piece Sword II share their debut album Spirit World Tour, a snapshot of the collective’s shared experiences over the past three years, with lyrics that explore refusal, love and rage, degeneracy, fluidity, life force and psychological warfare. Starting their journey playing DIY and experimental shows across Atlanta, Sword II have built a body of music and combine it with politically charged lyrics.

Recorded between 2020 and 2022 at their Lakewood, Atlanta, basement studio, a few houses down from The Dungeon, where The Dungeon Family and OutKast made their first records and a source of inspiration for the band, Spirit World Tour was created during a period of change across America and the world. "The album title came to us because we were experimenting with a lot of different styles of music and ways of recording, especially during the pandemic and uprising year of 2020," explains the band. "That whole summer we were immersed in that climate, making friends with people on the street, bringing generators and speakers to demonstrations, washing tear gas from our eyes. And then when we would finally go back home to make music, we had a new perspective on how we wanted to do things."

Formed in 2018, Mari González (they/them, bass and vocals), Certain Zuko (she/her, guitar and vocals) and Travis Arnold (he/him, guitar and vocals) make up the band, each member coming from different backgrounds within the ATL music scenes. Spirit World Tour was born out of years' worth of sessions that were entirely experimental, where guitars would be changed to synths and then back, real drum kits turned into electronic ones, and speeding up and warping almost anything they could work with, the album slowly began to take shape. The result is a record that moves in and out of punk, noise and pop sensibilities.