@Misc.skin
Spirit World Tour, Sword II’s 2023 debut and one of The FADER’s best albums of that year, was a ferocious project that played with shoegaze textures and dream pop melodies, swirling indie rock history together and blasting it back out into the unforgiving world it reflected. Around the same time it was released, the Atlanta-based band performed at South River Festival. The event was part of a wave of protests against Cop City, a $90 million, 85-acre section of a south Atlanta forest on which the city’s police department built a training center. More than 35 attendees were arrested as police moved in and shut down the event. For Sword II, this moment deepened their resolve in protesting police and provided them with an urgency to write and record their next album.
Released on November 14, Electric Hour fizzes with the energy of a band driven by purpose. While not directly political in their lyrics, the songs on Electric Hour reflect a group of musicians who feel the walls closing in at the same time the roof is blown off; it’s a collection of twitchy and frantic songs that nevertheless feel euphoric in their ability to proffer a brighter future. Ahead, the band recounts how what was going on in the studio and their time protesting Cop City affected the creation process of their latest effort.
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CERTAIN ZUKO: Travis and I rented a house in Atlanta that was basically for the band to write and record in. Pretty quickly we realized that none of the electricity was grounded. The whole house was wired super crazy. So we were getting shocked all the time but we had just moved in so we had to make it work. It was crazy. If you were touching a guitar and touching a mic it would, like, complete the circuit. It was like making music in an electric chair. There is a lot more acoustic guitar on Electric Hour because that was less scary to play.
At the same time there was a huge movement to fight the building of Cop City, [aka The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center]. They wanted to cut down one of the last forested areas in the city to build a fake city where police could train to raid people's houses and stop protests. It was a plan set up in reaction to the George Floyd protests. There was a lot of direct action, people breaking stuff, burning stuff in protest. Just this whole culture created around the movement. There was an encampment in the forest. A lot of people were living in the forest for months and created a whole community in there, tree sitting and that kind of thing. In March of that year [2023] we performed at a fundraiser in the forest where 23 people were charged with domestic terrorism just for being there [some had their charges dropped in August 2025].
There were hundreds of cops grabbing people who were trying to leave. Tons of SWAT cars. We had already played earlier in the day but we were basically just telling everybody to stay close to the stage, don’t leave. Everybody locked arms. It was a face off with the cops until eventually they let us leave.
The level of repression after the forest was raided was really insane and the police were just coming after anybody. Anyone who the cops thought was connected to the movement had their houses raided. It was a really scary and intense atmosphere. There were tons of cops in our neighborhood. They would set up outside people's houses. Flashing their lights in people’s windows just to intimidate them. So the house we were making music in was falling apart and shocking us. And then that was happening.
The house we were making music in was falling apart and shocking us. And then [police raids] were happening.
@Misc.skin
MARI GONZÁLES: We are living in the electric hour. All we see on our phones are images of war and ICE raids. It gave us a real urgency to create and seize the moment.
Now is the time to start a band, to go out with your friends, not isolate yourself. Electric Hour isn’t a call to action but making it was a really healing process during a difficult time. It felt very profound. You only get like one shot to do what you want to do. We’re thrown into this situation of capitalism and rising fascism in America. The time to do something about it is now. Shift the youth culture and shift that energy towards making a new world that looks different to the structure that we have now.
