WITH A RUNTIME OF 26 MINUTES, THE ATLANTA-BASED BAND LEAVES MUCH TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN THEIR DEBIT ALBUM.
Sword II’s latest album, Spirit World Tour, is a deliciously overwhelming cacophony of shoegaze-inspired, gothic melodies.
The intro song, “Damage,” offers a drum-line that throbs through you like a heartbeat. The voices of bandmates Mari González and Corey Zuko repeat, “Hold my breath, wishing death” until the start of the phrase can’t be distinguished from the end, eventually giving way to a guitar solo that takes unexpected harmonic paths.
Every track of Spirit World Tour contains a sonic surprise. “Mirror” starts off as a heavy, grunge-filled track but shifts to a more bubbly sound halfway through, giving a pleasant shock to the system. As an electronic pop melody fills the air, the notes of a keyboard slide into each other like slime being stretched, suspending the song in perfect dissonance for just a moment before resolving back into the original key. Time becomes putty-like in “Mirror,” squeezed and expanded by the hands of Sword II, making for a dizzyingly interesting act.
The brilliance of Sword II is their musicality. Spirit World Tour is so textured that it becomes a tactile experience. The tracks have nails that run over your body, grating and dragging until they create static energy. Sparks fly throughout the whole album, but especially in “9-12.” The song doesn’t have any lyrics, instead featuring González percussively vocalizing over a piano melody and rumbly bassline. Their voice knocks from one side of your head to the other, ebbing and flowing like water coursing over river rocks.
“Crystal” and “DRM” add a dark, supernatural layer to the album. A melodic motif fitting of Carmilla or Robert Pattinson’s Batman runs throughout both songs, while the crinkly feedback of a guitar amp wails in the background.
The music videos for “First Rule of the Bug” and “Body” are both recorded on a camcorder, featuring zoomed-in shots of grasshoppers and spiders. The longer the forms of these creepy crawlies linger on the screen, the more alien—but also more familiar—they become. These videos beg the question, can we really trust our interpretation of the world to be correct? What is the value of a human life in comparison to that of a bug? Sword II offers similar close-ups of musical elements in Spirit World Tour as well. Is that the sound of a guitar or is it the dull throbbing of your head after a night out? Are those the beating of drums or is it the quickening pace of your heart when locking eyes with a lover?
Comparable to Yves Tumor, Sword II imaginatively reshapes the experience of living and having a body with their music. There is no passive listening to this album. It leaves no other option than to stare at it as if it were the Sun; pulsing with energy and glaringly bright.
Grade: A
Check out Spirit World Tour here: