On her new album, Atlanta-based musician Kennie Mason pushes Siichaq into heavier, stranger territory, turning distortion, doom, electronics, Southern decay, Indigenous identity, and radical vulnerability into a record about trying to remain human inside a world that often feels anything but.
There is nothing especially neat about The Righteous Sword.
That is part of what makes it convincing.
The new album from Siichaq, the project of Atlanta-based musician Kennie Mason, moves through doom metal, industrial electronics, shoegaze, dark club music, indie rock, noise, and moments of startling vulnerability without appearing particularly concerned about whether any of those categories are supposed to coexist.
Mason describes the resulting world as chaotic.
Not accidentally.
“I had only bits and pieces of songs and no real plan,” she says of entering the studio. “There were moments of skepticism and fear, and there were moments of overwhelming excitement.”
Rather than eliminating that uncertainty, she allowed it to shape the record.
Each song began absorbing fragments of whatever music she loved until the distinctions became increasingly irrelevant.
The result is The Righteous Sword: an album where conscious rage and private despair occupy the same landscape, where programmed drums can carry as much emotional weight as lyrics, and where heaviness becomes less an aesthetic choice than a way of reflecting the environment that produced the songs.
For Mason, that environment is impossible to separate from the self.
“For better or for worse, my interior world is very much a product of the exterior world,” she says.
That might be the central idea holding the record together.
Politics is personal because people live inside political systems.
Identity is personal because history does not remain abstract.
And despair is rarely isolated from the conditions that created it.
What Makes a Sword Righteous?
The title itself sounds almost biblical.
The Righteous Sword evokes justice and violence simultaneously.
It raises uncomfortable questions about authority: who gets to determine righteousness, who gets to wield power, and what happens when people convince themselves their violence is morally justified?
For Mason, however, the sword represents something more hopeful.
Justice.
“The Righteous Sword, to me, is a metaphor for justice,” she says.
Her interpretation begins with a deep skepticism toward institutions.
People surrender enormous amounts of money, freedom, and authority to governments, she argues, many of which consistently fail the people they are supposed to represent.
Yet the album is not simply nihilistic.
“And despite that, humanity persists,” Mason says. “People form communities, we do the very best we can, and most significantly, we never give up on the pursuit of justice.”
That persistence is important because The Righteous Sword repeatedly flirts with hopelessness without fully accepting it.
Its world may be decaying.
Its guitars may feel hostile.
Its politics may be furious.
But the album remains rooted in the idea that recognizing corruption is not the same thing as surrendering to it.
Mason describes the experience of trying to remain “a good” person during an era of what she calls “top-down degeneracy.”
That task is messy.
So the record is messy too.
When Vulnerability Stops Hiding
One of the album’s most arresting songs, “Doing Damage,” arrives from a very different kind of confrontation.
Instead of abstracting pain through elaborate metaphor, Mason strips the language down.
The result frightened her.
“‘Doing Damage’ is definitely one of the more vulnerable songs in terms of directness,” she says. “It did feel a bit more frightening to bring into the studio, but definitely scarier to release publicly.”
Mason had already considered herself vulnerable as a songwriter.
The song showed her there was another layer underneath.
“It proved that in some cases, less is more,” she says, before joking that this is a lesson she has “not quite integrated in most areas” of her life.
The simplicity of the lyric is matched by an almost contradictory arrangement.
Mason’s vocal remains restrained and solemn while distortion swallows everything around it.
Working with Ben Wulkan and Evan Dangerfield, she stacked multiple layers of feedback over guitar-driven instrumentation.
The effect is punishing without becoming theatrical.
“We didn’t really plan that at all,” Mason admits.
Her love of gritty, noisy, lo-fi music guided the instrumentation, while Duster influenced the vocal approach.
The result is a song where fragility does not need silence.
The voice can remain soft while the world around it collapses.
Finally Making the Heavy Record
The heavier direction of The Righteous Sword has been brewing for years.
Mason traces the desire back to seventh grade and an obsession with Nirvana.
The problem was that wanting to make heavy music and naturally writing heavy music were two different things.
“I just kept writing folk songs or indie pop songs, so that’s what I recorded,” she says.
Trying to force herself into a genre never worked.
Mason could hear the effort.
“It’s so obvious that I’m trying trying trying to be this thing that I’m not.”
So The Righteous Sword became an attempt to solve a difficult creative problem.
How do you become heavier without performing heaviness?
How do you build something grittier and more aggressive while keeping it recognizably yours?
Wulkan and Dangerfield became crucial collaborators in answering those questions.
The record was significantly more collaborative than CATCHER, with musicians moving between roles and the process changing almost daily.
That fluidity allowed the sound to develop without being locked into a predetermined aesthetic.
“And luckily for me,” Mason says, “what it evolved into is pretty gnarly, which is perfect because that is what I’ve been trying to create for years now.”
Southern Gothic After the Factory Arrives
Siichaq’s music has been framed as a modern, industrialized version of Southern Gothic.
Mason is refreshingly cautious about embracing the label too academically.
“I’ll be totally honest when I say that I am not very well studied on the actual principles of Southern Gothic as a genre,” she says.
Still, the overlap is obvious.
Isolation.
Religion.
Decay.
A landscape whose nostalgia and horror are difficult to separate.
Mason grew up in the South, and its imagery remains deeply embedded in her visual imagination.
But the decay she hears around her is not necessarily abandoned houses and dying towns.
It is ideological.
“Maybe it’s not the sort of decay one might think of in the traditional sense,” she says. “It’s more of a metaphysical, ideological decay.”
Her criticism is specifically directed toward political leadership and attacks on individual rights.
Against that backdrop, the darkness of Siichaq’s music becomes less stylization than documentation.
“So the music is dark and chaotic because the world is dark and chaotic,” Mason says.
The line explains more about The Righteous Sword than almost any genre tag could.
A Name That Demands Something
Mason releases music under her Inuit name, Siichaq.
It is not simply a pseudonym.
The decision reflects her evolving relationship with her heritage and the kind of accountability she wants the project to carry.
“I thought using the name would challenge me and whatever audience I could reach,” she explains.
The unfamiliarity of the name creates questions.
Those questions create opportunities to talk about where it comes from.
But that curiosity also places responsibility back on Mason.
She knew using the name would require her to deepen her own knowledge so that she could answer thoughtfully about her heritage and culture.
There are still gaps, she acknowledges, particularly because she has not visited family in Alaska since childhood.
Her name also carries generational significance.
“As per Inupiat tradition, I am named after an ancestor,” Mason says.
That creates another form of creative responsibility.
“I want the values of my heritage to be positively reflected in both my art and my person.”
Siichaq therefore does not dictate a specific musical style.
It dictates values.
Identity and politics were always supposed to be inseparable from the project.
Genre as Something That Happens
If CATCHER already moved freely between shoegaze, noise rock, strings, pop harmony, and banjo, The Righteous Sword pushes the principle even further.
Mason’s relationship with genre borders on antagonistic.
“I guess I resent the entire premise of genres,” she says.
That does not mean she deliberately dismantles categories every time she writes.
Often, she simply does not think about them.
Different influences appear because they are available.
A song becomes whatever it becomes.
“I feel like it sorta just… happens,” she says.
That instinct explains why the record can move from scraping shoegaze to industrial production without sounding like a genre exercise.
The cohesion comes from Mason rather than category.
Her taste is the throughline.
Her voice is the throughline.
The emotional circumstances are the throughline.
The style is allowed to change.
Learning Heaviness From the Rhythm Section
“Cattle Driver” marks one of the clearest departures from Mason’s earlier songwriting methods.
Programmed double-kick drums and electronic production drive the track beneath droning bass and heavy guitars.
Mason credits Wulkan and Dangerfield entirely for the electronic programming, but the process changed how she hears songwriting.
Building a song rhythm-first was unfamiliar.
“I’m not a drummer and I’ve never actually crafted the melodic delivery around drums,” she says. “I enjoyed it way more than I could’ve anticipated.”
The experience altered how she thinks about heaviness.
Rather than treating distortion or guitar tone as the primary source of intensity, Mason began paying closer attention to drums and bass.
“The tone of a song can be fundamentally altered by the drums and the rhythm,” she says.
Now, when she is trying to communicate a particular feeling, those elements are often where she looks first.
It is a deceptively significant change.
Heaviness is not simply volume.
It is movement.
Pressure.
Repetition.
The body understands rhythm before it understands distortion.
In Conversation With Siichaq
MUNDANE: The Righteous Sword is such an evocative title—it suggests morality, violence, judgment, and maybe even the danger of believing you’re unquestionably right. What does the “righteous sword” represent to you, and how does that idea connect the record’s different themes?
SIICHAQ: The Righteous Sword, to me, is a metaphor for justice.
It’s the idea that every day people sacrifice a great deal of money, freedoms, and rights to their governments, almost all of which were set up and are presently run by scumbags.
And despite that, humanity persists!
People form communities, we do the very best we can, and most significantly, we never give up on the pursuit of justice.
The themes across this record are a little all over the place, but I think they all capture the complexity of trying to be a person—a good one, hopefully—during an era of what I consider to be top-down degeneracy.
MUNDANE: “Doing Damage” feels strikingly direct compared to songwriting that might hide difficult emotions behind metaphor. You’ve said you deliberately shut down the part of your brain that wanted to use “flowery language” and simply described how terrible you felt. Did writing that plainly change your relationship with vulnerability as a songwriter?
SIICHAQ: “Doing Damage” is definitely one of the more vulnerable songs in terms of directness, and it did feel a bit more frightening to bring into the studio, but definitely scarier to release publicly.
I thought before that I was kinda as vulnerable as I could get in my music, but DD made it apparent that I could push myself further.
It proved that in some cases, less is more… a lesson I haven’t quite integrated in most areas of my life.
MUNDANE: Sonically, “Doing Damage” has this fascinating contrast between your relatively soft vocal and an almost punishing wall of distortion. When you were working with Ben Wulkan and Evan Dangerfield, how did you approach building that tension between intimacy and sheer volume?
SIICHAQ: The funny thing is, we didn’t really plan that at all.
I’m a fan of gritty, noisy, lo-fi music, and I was looking for ways to channel elements of that into this record.
Ben and Evan were on board with that idea right away, so we workshopped some chords and decided to keep it super guitar-driven, and I think we added multiple tracks of straight feedback stacked on top of each other throughout the whole song.
When it came to vocals, I took some inspiration from Duster and thought it would be a nice contrast to deliver the lyrics solemnly.
We were all happy with that approach, so I’m glad we took it the direction we did.
MUNDANE: The Righteous Sword pushes further into industrial, electronic, and heavier territory, with sounds that can move between doom metal, dark club music, shoegaze, and indie rock. What drew you toward that harsher sonic palette this time, and how much did experimentation in the studio shape the direction of the record?
SIICHAQ: Well truthfully, I have wanted to make heavier music for a very long time, probably since 7th grade when I got really, really into Nirvana.
But I just kept writing folk songs or indie pop songs, so that’s what I recorded.
It’s hard to force a genre, at least for me, because when I listen back I feel like it’s so obvious that I’m trying trying trying to be this thing that I’m not.
So when we embarked on this recording journey, I was really determined to make something heavier, grittier, more aggressive, but do it in a way that didn’t make me feel like a total fraud, you know?
Ben and Evan were crucial in helping me find a way to do that and make it entirely authentic in its execution.
There was a lot of experimentation in the studio, especially because this album was a far more collaborative process than CATCHER.
The dynamics of who-plays-what-role was different every day, and the fluidity of the process allowed the record to evolve freely.
And luckily for me, what it evolved into is pretty gnarly, which is perfect because that is what I’ve been trying to create for years now.
MUNDANE: You describe Siichaq as exploring a modern, industrialized version of Southern Gothic. Southern Gothic traditionally carries ideas of decay, religion, violence, isolation, and haunted histories. What does that tradition mean to you in 2026, and what does your own version of it sound like?
SIICHAQ: I’ll be totally honest when I say that I am not very well studied on the actual principles of Southern Gothic as a genre, but I do know that my music explores many similar themes, especially isolation, religion, and decay.
I’m also from the South, and the visual aesthetic speaks strongly to me because it is both nostalgic and deeply unnerving.
I’m not necessarily trying to make Southern Gothic music, but after spending my entire life in this region of the country, it’s sort of impossible to ignore the decay that’s happening all around me.
Maybe it’s not the sort of decay one might think of in the traditional sense, it’s more of a metaphysical, ideological decay.
Obviously this doesn’t apply to every person in the South, and in fact, the most incredible people I know live here or are from here.
The problem is really the government, which is made up of far-right freaks who live and love to strip people of their rights.
So the music is dark and chaotic because the world is dark and chaotic.
I don’t know if that makes it actually Southern Gothic in the scholarly sense, but that’s kinda my interpretation, I guess.
MUNDANE: You release music under your Inuit name, Siichaq, while identity has increasingly become part of the territory you explore through your records. Has using that name changed the way you think about authorship, heritage, or what you want this project to represent?
SIICHAQ: I wanted to use the name Siichaq in the first place because my relationship to my heritage had evolved significantly over the years.
I thought using the name would challenge me and whatever audience I could reach.
I am acutely aware that the name is “unusual,” and people are curious, so they ask about the meaning, and that’s really what I was hoping would happen.
For my own part, I knew I would need to learn a lot more about my heritage and culture so that I could accurately and insightfully answer potential questions.
There are still some unfortunate gaps in my knowledge, especially because I have not gotten to visit my family in Alaska since I was around eight.
I also thought that using Siichaq as the name for this project would push me to hold myself and my art to a higher standard.
As per Inupiat tradition, I am named after an ancestor, and I am also outspoken about my heritage, which is further motivation to make meaningful, political art.
It’s motivation to continually educate myself and pursue goodness in all areas of my life.
I want the values of my heritage to be positively reflected in both my art and my person.
Point is, if anything, using my Indigenous name hasn’t exactly changed the music. If anything, I chose the name because I knew that I wanted to use this project to engage with identity and politics and to be inextricably dictated by my values.
MUNDANE: CATCHER moved through shoegaze, strings, noise rock, pop harmonies, and even bare-bones banjo, while the new material seems to push those contrasts further. Do you think of genre as something you intentionally dismantle, or are these combinations simply the natural result of everything you listen to and play?
SIICHAQ: I’d say it’s a mixture of both.
But maybe in reality I just don’t think about genre much at all.
I guess I resent the entire premise of genres, so I do prefer pulling bits and pieces from all across the spectrum when I’m building a sonic aesthetic.
Anyway, it’s hard to predict how a song will shake out genre-wise, ’cause it doesn’t feel like it’s entirely up to me.
I feel like it sorta just… happens, I guess.
But I try not to force a song to be something it’s not, and I’m not personally super interested in figuring out what category encompasses which traits that are most prevalent in my music.
Did that even answer the question? I’m sorry.
MUNDANE: “Cattle Driver” combines programmed double-kick drums, droning bass, heavy guitars, and electronic production. How has programming and electronic production changed the way you think about rhythm and heaviness compared with writing primarily through guitars?
SIICHAQ: I can take absolutely no credit for the electronic programming and production. It was totally Ben and Evan, who both have years of experience under their belts making electronic music.
That being said, it was, for me, a totally new method of building a song, and it was super inspirational.
Of course, there have been times when I’ve written, recorded, or demoed a song and started with the drums first.
But I’m not a drummer and I’ve never actually crafted the melodic delivery around drums, and I enjoyed it way more than I could’ve anticipated.
It also made me realize that the tone of a song can be fundamentally altered by the drums and the rhythm, which is an obvious conclusion but not something I had explored independently before.
Now, when I’m attempting to convey a particular tone in a song, I look first to the drums and the bass line, because those are the elements that, in my opinion, had the strongest influence on The Righteous Sword and have the highest potential for communicating a specific feeling through instrumentation.
MUNDANE: Your music can be intensely introspective while also examining larger social structures and ideas about identity. When writing The Righteous Sword, did the personal and societal sides of the record feel interconnected, or do you approach those two modes of songwriting differently?
SIICHAQ: For better or for worse, my interior world is very much a product of the exterior world.
Every song that seems to be purely personal is, in some way, tied to the material conditions of my environment.
Obviously, when writing those songs, the focus is primarily on my experience and my perception of that experience, and when I set out to write something that deals with a broader social and/or political subject, the lyrical content tends to reflect that broadness.
I don’t really try to keep them separate, for the most part though, because nobody exists in a vacuum and I think it’s important to recognize how injustices impact our lives on an individual level, our communities, and societies around the globe.
MUNDANE: You’ve now moved from My Dog Ate My Patriotism through CATCHER and into The Righteous Sword in a relatively short period, with each project seemingly expanding the vocabulary of Siichaq. What have you discovered about your own sound through that evolution—and what are you still trying to figure out?
SIICHAQ: The thing that has really solidified for me is that I’m likely never going to have a distinct or consistent sound.
I didn’t ever try for that, but I’m more certain than ever that it’s just not in the cards for me.
My sound is whatever appeals to me in the moment, and that’s what keeps me interested in music—its fluidity, its constant state of evolution.
On the flip side, I’m still trying to figure absolutely everything out.
I feel like I know nothing all the time.
But with each recording and release process, I have a little more confidence in my ability to make stuff that I’m proud of, so maybe one day I’ll feel like I know something about something.
Nobody Exists in a Vacuum
If there is a single sentence that explains The Righteous Sword, it may be Mason’s insistence that “nobody exists in a vacuum.”
The album’s personal and political songs are not two opposing modes.
They are different distances from the same reality.
Private distress happens inside economic systems.
Identity develops inside history.
Loneliness exists within communities.
Fear is shaped by governments, environments, relationships, bodies, and memory.
Even a song that appears to be entirely inward-looking carries traces of whatever happened outside the room.
That understanding makes Siichaq’s increasingly abrasive sound feel less like an aesthetic pivot than a natural escalation.
Mason wanted to make heavier music for years.
Now she has found a way of doing it that does not require pretending to be someone else.
The noise can coexist with softness.
Electronic programming can coexist with guitar distortion.
Indigenous identity can inform the values of the work without dictating what the music is supposed to sound like.
Southern Gothic can be useful as an atmosphere without becoming an academic obligation.
And genre itself can become something Mason mostly ignores.
There is a freedom in that refusal.
“My sound is whatever appeals to me in the moment,” she says. “And that’s what keeps me interested in music—its fluidity, its constant state of evolution.”
That may also explain why the chaos of The Righteous Sword feels so purposeful.
It does not offer order because Mason does not experience the world as orderly.
Instead, the record tries to make something truthful from contradiction.
Rage beside tenderness.
Politics beside autobiography.
Faith in justice beside distrust of institutions.
A soft voice buried beneath feedback.
The sword is righteous not because its wielder has all the answers.
It is righteous because the pursuit continues.
And for Siichaq, continuing to question, create, educate herself, build community, and refuse indifference may be the closest thing to righteousness available.
