The Sword Guitarist: “If You Voted for Donald Trump You Need to Take a Look at Your Life”
The Sword guitarist Kyle Shutt was our guest on this week’s episode of The MetalSucks Podcast, and as could be expected given all that’s going on in the world right now, he had plenty to say on current events, most notably the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing Black Lives Matter protests.
Speaking on the uncertainty of the band’s upcoming touring plans, having already had to postpone one run, and how those tie into current events, Shutt offered:
“As far as the future of The Sword and making more music and stuff like that, it’s hard to say. I’m not necessarily a political person but I am humanist and I believe we should all be kind to each other and live our lives with love and good intentions.
“Police are just mercilessly murdering black people, any person of color, and there’s more important things going on right now than rock n’ roll. We need to stop this needless violence, we need to get this awful president out of office. There’s so many things that need to be addressed for us to move forward as a society and I think it’s a good thing that we’re taking this, pause, if you will.
“I don’t have any answers, but my point of view is just that I’m going to continue to just live my life with kindness and I’m going to raise my kids right and I’m going to deal with my family members, whatever their political views are. Everyone’s got them Republican parents in Texas. I don’t know your affiliation but if you voted for Donald Trump you need to take a look at your life.”
On the current protests, and hitting the establishment where it hurts — their pockets — being the only way to enact real change:
“I don’t like to demonize things because that’s how you get in trouble with backlash and stuff. Like marijuana has been demonized for so long that you can’t even… the cops are so brainwashed in like, Alabama, that even if it’s legal they’re probably still going to arrest people. Just demonizing things isn’t a good thing, but capitalism, the nature of it just makes people not care about anything but the profit. People that make dog food, they don’t give a fuck about your dog, they just want to sell more dog food.
“I’m not trying to cheapen the mass protests going on right now, I think that’s very important. The only real way protesting is going to affect the people you’re protesting against is to use your wallet. Money’s all they care about, so take that money away from them and they’ll change their attitude real fuckin’ quick. Support black owned businesses, support anything that doesn’t feed into the hate machine.”
Listen to the rest of our chat with Kyle below or right here.
