Back in 2020, the pandemic halted everyone’s plans. Canadian twins, Mercedes & Phoenix Arn-Horn, discovered an opportunity during this period of incubation, to create a brand new entity encapsulating everything they were passionate about. With prior music experience & a home studio, the refreshing & authentic alternative project of Softcult inevitably blossomed. We had the chance to speak with the band about their creative inspirations, the importance of social awareness, future endeavors & more.

For people who are unfamiliar with you, how would you describe Softcult?

MERCEDES: If I were to describe to someone who’s never heard of us before, I would want them to know that to us Softcult is not just a band; it’s our form of activism. To us, it has a lot of meaning. I think our lyrical content is what I’m the most proud of because we’re writing about topics like gender violence & misogyny; basically trying to carry this fourth-wave-riot-grrrl torch into the future. That’s what we’re really all about. We’re also really DIY. Phoenix records all of our stuff here in our room, I do all the music video stuff, we make ‘zines– so really it’s a project that is all-encompassing for us. We put everything into it.

Being siblings, was music always something you found yourself doing together? Or was it something more so discovered over time?

PHOENIX: We kind of always did it. That’s actually how I started playing drums; Cedes was just always so good at guitar, shredding everyday, and we just wanted to jam together so I picked up the drums so we could jam and the rest was history, I guess.

MERCEDES: We chose our roles early. But I don’t know when we would’ve started. We were writing songs in like a ‘band format’ when we were like 13 or something– super emo & angsty.

Your debut EP was titled Year of the Rat and the most recent EP is Year of the Snake. I imagine they’re inspired by the Chinese zodiac, but they don’t particularly follow the calendar in terms of their release. Is there another significance?

PHOENIX: Yeah! So, we did actually write a lot of the songs for the Year of the Rat [EP] during the actual year of the rat, but it just didn’t come out that year. But we thought it was a cool metaphor. The artwork for the EP on that one is a bunch of rats running in one direction with one red rat among all these white rats, so that’s supposed to symbolize the ‘rat race’ and how it just takes one person to be like “you know what? I’m doing things differently” to break up a pattern. So, that’s where that name & idea came from. And for the artwork of the Year of the Snake, it’s basically a snake that’s coiled up but it’s been all broken off into a maze. So, that was another concept we had where you’re stuck in a cycle & it’s hard to navigate your way through certain systems the way society has things set up. You can probably tell that a lot of our ideas, they start as visual ideas and then they become more fleshed out concepts.

MERCEDES: And to be honest, when we were just creating the titles, a lot of them were just working titles because we didn’t know exactly how the releases were going to go. A lot of the song titles even stayed as working titles. Like, we were never gonna call “Another Bish,” “Another Bish.” But when you sit with it long enough, it kind of sticks. It’s also worth mentioning that my dad was born in the year of the rat and my mom was born in the year of the snake. But we definitely found some analogies in there after the fact.

Phoenix’s mention of the coiled snake cover art reminded me of one of the tracks on Year of the Snake, “Uzumaki,” which I discovered is Japanese for ‘spiral.’ What was the inspiration behind incorporating that concept in such a lyrically heavy song?

PHOENIX: That name & the concept came from this graphic novel [titled Uzumaki] by Junji Ito. It’s kinda crazy, too, it’s basically about this town that gets this curse where they become obsessed with spirals and they go insane and the spirals eventually kill everyone. We just see metaphors everywhere, but we just thought that Uzumaki was a good metaphor for an emotional spiral or a cycle that continues & eventually destroys you if you don’t do anything to change it.

MERCEDES: And the song is about the cycle of abuse. Specifically, after traumatic events happen, when you’re trying to walk away from them & how the effects of the trauma can linger long after the event has passed. And it’s always this sort of cycle thereafter where you keep ending up in abusive relationships, or you yourself become an abuser as a result of this trauma you had, or even trying to get over something that’s happened to you but you have people around you asking if you’re okay when it’s clearly still weighing on you. But the spiral seemed like a good visual & analogy for that never ending cycle.

A few tracks from the most recent EP, like “BBWB” & “Uzumaki,” shed light on difficult topics such as emotional & physical abuse. What do you hope listeners, who may have experienced similar situations, take away from these songs?

MERCEDES: The main reason we even write songs like that– it’s not meant to be triggering in any way– it’s more so: it’s worse if you don’t talk about it & always try to hide these topics. Whether it’s because you’re ashamed or because you’re not able to face it at the moment, it doesn’t really stop the cycle. So, it just means that it could keep happening to whoever survived it or someone else. The more we can talk about these things & bring them to light, while it is a weight lifted, it’ll also help people in the future because there’s always room for growth & education. Like “gaslight;” there was never really a word like that for us as teenagers growing up. We couldn’t identify those red flags of gaslighting because we just didn’t know what it was. With every passing year we’re learning more & more about stuff like that, so we want to help educate & give a place for people to feel open about these issues or just ask questions & learn more to avoid those bad situations from happening in the future.

PHOENIX: Awareness is definitely an important part of it and also introspection. Like Cedes was saying with “gaslighting,” we didn’t know what that was as teenagers. We’ve definitely felt gaslit before & I’m sure I’ve gaslit before in relationships & didn’t even know it was happening. And like “BWBB” too, once you hear a song like that & really think about “oh dang, do I do that?” or “do my friends do that?,” you know? It’s just important to think about how you may contribute to it.

It was mentioned briefly earlier, so can you talk a little bit about your own magazine, SCripture? What inspired that project to come about?

PHOENIX: We actually got really inspired by the riot grrrl moment from the 90’s. A lot of the music culture in the 90’s was based around ‘zines, so that was a big thing that inspired us. We watched the Kathleen Hanna documentary that talks about Bikini Kill & how they started out with their ‘zine.

MERCEDES: ‘Zines were just a great way to involve fans & foster a community, but also bring feminist art & culture to a community, especially in the 90’s that just was very masculine & pretty toxic at times, when it came to involving women in the scene. It really introduced feminist art & culture to the punk scene, so we were just really inspired by that. Phoenix does all of our single [cover] art & it’s all kinda mixed media.

PHOENIX: Yeah, I guess I’ve been making collages since I was a kid. But I just started having more fun with it & trying to use Photoshop. It’s a work in progress!

MERCEDES: Pretty much everything you see in the ‘zine was actually cut-out pieces of paper, glued together, scanned & photocopied a million times.

PHOENIX: It’s a fun way to go in-depth about certain topics that we talk about in songs but also it’s just a fun little craft– I love doing crafty things!

MERCEDES: And involving our fanbase. It’s another reason we can’t wait to get on tour so we can bring the ‘zines out to shows. And another fun thing is how we have a submission section for our magazine because we’ve been getting some really cool submissions.

You’re going to be headlining in the UK in May & then supporting Teenage Wrist on their tour in the states for the summer. What’s something you’re most looking forward to? Finally being able to perform for everyone?

MERCEDES: Yeah! Definitely performing. We’ve been in other bands before Softcult and we would tour pretty heavily, so not being on the road for 2 years has been very weird. But it’s also given us a chance to start this project & make it what it is now. Get our music out there & get a fanbase that might show up to our shows! I think that’s what we’re looking forward to the most, is finally being able to play these songs live & actually meet people in person who are into our music. It’s just going to be a whole ‘nother energy that we haven’t experienced with this project yet, so we’re stoked for that for sure.

Do you have any goals for the rest of the year? Anything we should anticipate?

PHOENIX: Right now, we’re gearing up for some shows, which is going to be fun. But I think what we really want to do is finish our album this year. So, we’ve been writing & recording & trying to get into ‘album mode.’

MERCEDES: Yeah, definitely by the end of the year we want to have more songs out, more videos & stuff. We’ll have had some touring under our belt at that point. The plan is just keep on keepin’ on!