A$AP Ferg's Still Striving

The rockstar still exists as an archetype - both ironically and sincerely - if you’re willing to confront the world directly. Sword II doesn’t shy away from that. Their heart is obvious, but more than anything, they’re impossible to look away from. Like their sound, the stage is shared evenly between three distinct frontmen. Your attention keeps shifting - and it should. Trying to fixate on one would feel like choosing the most beautiful carousel pony as a child. They all are. Individually, González, Arnold, and Zuko hold their own; together, they create something inundating. It’s gestalt. Sword II is expanding beyond a purely DIY framework, but they carry that origin with them. Their work understands that music is as much the sound as it is the listener. Trust is embedded in what they make. It’s music for me, for you, and for us.

Alice Mercy— What’s your name, where are you from, and what do you do in Sword II?

Mari— 
I'm Mari. I'm from Atlanta. 
Mostly I play bass and sing… and sometimes guitar.

Travis— I'm Travis. I’m from Atlanta. I play guitar and sing… and sometimes bass.

Certain— I’m Certain. I’m 
also from Atlanta. I play guitar and sing.

AM— Why did you name yourselves Sword II?

C— We wanted the name to just be Sword, but there was already a band called Sword.

AM— Where did you meet?

C— We met in the music scene. Me and Mari met 10 years ago at a house show in the suburbs at this kid’s basement.

M— It was a kid’s dad’s warehouse. He would throw crazy shows and there were never any adults there - it was just awesome. Then we met Trav around the same time in Atlanta.

AM— Is there still a big DIY scene in Atlanta?

T— Yeah, but at the time when we all started hanging out there was more of a DIY music scene for sure. That was, like, 2016?

M— Yeah, around 2016.

AM— How did you start making music together?

M— We were all in other bands. Trav and I lived together, then Trav and Certain started hanging out and playing music together. Certain invited me over to play music. 
A lot.

T— This was probably our most organic combination of people in the scene at the time. 


C— I lived at this house where I had a studio. There was a drumkit in there… but the studio was so small. We smoked weed and made music there. It was really cramped. 


AM— Do you feel like you fit into a specific genre? 


T— We’ve never gone for a genre. Especially at the time we started, there was so much DIY music going on - rave scenes, house stuff, industrial techno, indie stuff, hardcore stuff, and especially rap stuff was influential to us. We were all just playing instruments and were inspired by the idea of being a band. 
Even though we were individually interested in specific things, the point of the band was to come together and make something new.

C— We were trying to be a band, but not necessarily a rock band.

M— I think if we classify ourselves as a rock band, it's kind of diminutive of everything else we’re influenced by. But the rock vibe is definitely something that comes up a lot.

AM— Even though your sound is unique, do you consider yourselves tied to Atlanta regionally?

T— I don't even think we have a choice.

M— 
It's a cultural mecca in so many ways. I feel honored to be a part of that.

T— It's cool to make a name for yourself somewhere where it's not necessarily common or the main thing we do. When you think about music in Atlanta, people are rappers, they’re trying to be popstars or whatever. I think it's cool for us to do the band thing here and that's part of our ethos… or swag.

AM— Has your process changed over time?

M— In a way it hasn't changed. We're really committed to how we work together - what’s needed from the music and from each other. Our commitment doesn’t change. This album was the first concentrated version of that. 
And hopefully the next one will be even more clarified.

T— Making Electric Hour was our first time sitting down and being like ‘okay, we're gonna make an album.’ It was a really good learning experience for us, learning how to collaborate.

C— When we were working before, we’d make one song and we’d fiddle with it forever. Then we’d get bored of that song and make another. 
But [for Electric Hour] we had to clarify what we wanted to do. Sometimes there's a big difference between what you say you want to do and how it turns out. It's challenging, there's so much music that means nothing. 
We were trying to make music that meant something to us.

AM— How do you balance all being frontmen?

M— It's never really a decision… at least up until this point.

T— Yeah, it's just a feeling, usually.

M— Anytime someone wants to sing, everyone's encouraging. We have a lot of songs where all of us have vocals - we played a lot more with harmonies and layers on [Electric Hour]. We definitely want to keep going in that direction. The moments where all three of us are singing on stage, are just really...

T— 
Perfect.

M—Yeah it's awesome. 


AM—How do you feel about performing?

T— Performing is lit. Sometimes I have more fun just being at band practice than I would on stage. But that was before this tour. On this tour I learned you gotta really think about what lyrics you want people to scream back at you. 
Because they will do it.

C— 
I really felt the love from the crowd a lot of times. 
It's funny to say, but I did. I’ve felt that way so often before, but it was different this time because we had done something clarified. Now, when we come back to record something else, it's gonna be a continuation of that energy… ‘how do we give to people on stage, what do we want to write?’ The band is us, but now it's also everyone who came to see us on this tour - all of those people are in the room now.

M— As a kid growing up in the suburbs, my parents were really strict so I always had an escapism thing. I was fascinated by performing in theatre: what it means, having something you rehearse that you can just get up and do. It's an extension of yourself, but it's also a character. 
Tour is dream escapist-mode, really. Your life is in a time warp.

C— 
 We’ve spent like 500 hours together on tour. It takes us probably two or three months to spend 500 hours together when we're home. So all positive and negative things are extremely sped up. You’ll have a disagreement and it's actually just gonna be resolved in an hour. And then the good things, it's just like, ‘oh… that was great.’

AM— Can a tour be a framework to live by?

C— Yeah, you're actually performing the whole time. You gotta make sure you get there with enough time to do your vocal warm up, do your makeup, make sure you drink enough water, make sure you don't get too drunk. It's this constant thing, then it culminates in the show. And then after the show, we have to load up all the gear and drive somewhere. It’s a massive performance.

AM— When you’re touring, what's one thing you need to do everyday to feel normal?

T— Eating healthy, eating well, not eating shit.

AM— Do you have a favorite venue you played on this tour?

M— I loved the show at Night Club 101.

AM— Yeah I felt like the crowd was really excited at 101. 


C— I think we're still learning how to play for people who really like our music. 
We were a local band for so long, so we would play for our homies, all the time… and that's great, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's…

T— That's easy mode. 


C— It’s easier and it's also just different. We have a relationship with those people outside of the band. Now when we play these shows, we've never met a lot of these people… but they know all the songs. It's just interesting. 


AM– How has the Atlanta DIY scene changed since you started making music together?

C— When we started playing there was a bigger network of bigger DIY venues throughout the US. These places could fit like 200-300 people. 
Now a lot of the remaining DIY spaces are pretty small… 100-150 people. So when we started playing, you could see pretty big bands play at these DIY places.

T— And it would be a big deal too. 


C— So that definitely changed by the time that we started touring. And I mean, it was kind of set in motion after this place, the Ghost Ship, in California caught on fire. People died. A lot of DIY venues have disappeared. If you want to tour across the country you need to pay for 300 capacity rooms through these corporate venues unless you’re just doing generator shows. I hope more DIY venues come back in a way that’s sustainable. That circuit generated a lot of creative music because there was a crowd for those venues in the DIY scene. You had those people in mind when you were making your music.

M— We're really lucky to be from Atlanta. So much of the culture is creating a space for yourself that you wanna play with. It’s very inherent to our upbringing and experience in music, and also why we get kind of jolted when people aren't giving that back to us. But it’s a good challenge to try to cultivate it in the younger fans who didn’t have the privilege of growing up in such an intense underground scene like we did. We need more venues that aren't corporate and more real life ticket buyers that aren’t scalpers.

C— Oh my god this is a message scalpers. Honestly, scalpers beware - if we catch you it's over. There are bot scalpers that buy tickets for shows and we're not famous. It's crazy.

AM— What does DIY culture mean to you?

C— It’s one of the only accessible spaces for underground intellect. Music helps because it makes these places open to everyone - you don't have to engage only in the terms of academia. A lot of people know something is wrong with the world and they wanna change it, but they’re not necessarily coming into that with a dense political education or the language used in universities. Music helps bridge that gap.

M— Making music is contextualized by the shows, the interactions with the crowds, and the spaces that we're playing in. We want to write music to fit into the performance, it’s a loop. If there are no DIY venues and people are only imagining playing in these corporate venues then the music is gonna be a feedback loop of that vibe. It's not gonna be original.

T— It's cool for us to be getting going like this, but to be used to DIY spaces. We’re able to not think about it too hard and just make some cool shit. And it's not like we're just making weird stuff - we're making music to have people dance along, sing along to. But we have that combination of being experimental and also wanting to connect with people. I feel like there’s a bigger conversation to be had about how Americans think in general. We’re all brainwashed to wait for acceptance or to be allowed to do something. When you're at a big corporate venue, you can look into the crowd and see that people are awkward and scared to dance because they're waiting for someone to tell them they can.

AM— What is your ethos?

T— When we talk about wanting to be a rock band, I feel like the spirit of rock and roll is to be bold as fuck about doing what you feel like is actually right and not waiting for permission, not waiting for some big corporate guy to co-sign you.

C— We don’t need to be co-signed.

T— Yeah, we don't need that for the future of us. That’s something we're really trying to remember, and hold.

M— Yeah that spirit. We definitely want to grow as a band, but keeping the spirit of DIY is a practice in our music and how we create together.