War On Women Lobby For Real Change On New Album, ‘Wonderful Hell’

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Shawna Potter felt defeated. After nearly a decade fighting for women's rights and advocating for safer spaces and bystander intervention training, Potter, the front person for the Baltimore-based hardcore collective War On Women saw the inauguration of the 45th president as a direct threat to those very rights she'd been fighting to protect. So she did what a lot of people did after the election: she took some time off, put down her pen, and focused her energy elsewhere.

Since that fateful day four years ago, exhaustion be damned, Potter and the rest of War On Women—including co-founder Brooks Harlan, bassist and vocalist Sue Werner, guitarist and vocalist Jennifer "Jenarchy" Vito and drummer Dave Cavalier—have refused to stay silent, using their voices instead to produce two blistering critiques of the most important social issues we face today. The first album, 2018's Capture The Flag, saw Potter eviscerate America's gun culture, toxic masculinity and the current administration on songs like "Predator in Chief" and "YDTMHTL," which includes guest vocals from activist and Bikini Kill lead singer, Kathleen Hanna.

The second album, Wonderful Hell, released digitally today and out physically on November 13 via Bridge Nine Records, was written pre-COVID, during a time when Potter felt overwhelmed by life in Trump's America. Loosely echoing the words of the late John Lewis and his idea of making "good trouble," Wonderful Hell leaves no injustice unchecked or systems of oppression unscathed. Tracks like "This Stolen Land" and "Her?," produced by Harlan and Jawbox frontman J. Robbins, pairs heavy guitar and anthemic chants with Potter’s pointed attacks on immigration policy and the sexism women face in public office ("But Her Emails/ But her makeup/ But her health/But her age," she screams). And "Milk and Blood" finds Potter unapologetically tearing down and setting fire to capitalism and the patriarchy. She also delves into the personal on "Big Words," where she details the dissolution of a close friendship, ending with the devastating line: "Hurt People/ Hurt People."

Mainly, though, this album serves as a necessary salve for the chaos of 2020, and a reminder that raising wonderful, beautiful hell in uncertain times is the best way to make change.

"This album is really about me finding my way out of that pit, and remembering that I can make a difference," Potter told GRAMMY.com in mid-October. "That it’s worth staying in the fight and that there's still fight left in me. It’s about knowing that other people feel that way, too, and that maybe they need a reminder that they're still needed."

With the 2020 election only days away, War On Women is here to remind you to stand up and exercise your right to vote on November 3. We caught up with Potter recently in the midst of moving to a new apartment to discuss the making of the new album, participating in activism at any age and the importance of casting your vote this year.

Since lockdown began eight months ago, what have you been doing? Has it been difficult on you?

I’m just really trying to enjoy my home and nest. That part has been a little easier than I thought. I'm actually making dinner every night instead of microwaving it, and I'm trying to make sure I move my body. I don't know where this comes from, but one of the main tenets of not feeling hopeless in a situation like this is to feel productive every day. And that can be defined in a lot of different ways. Sometimes, that literally is just to make dinner tonight. That's the thing you did, and that's fine, that's enough. I just try to make sure that I feel productive and get something accomplished, no matter how small, every day.

What do you suggest people do when they're feeling that sense of hopelessness and dread, which is such a common feeling people are experiencing right now?

That’s kind of what the album is about, at least a couple of songs. The first thing is to forgive yourself for having feelings; to not add the extra stress of feeling guilty for feeling hopeless. That's a waste of time. Then, it's to assess what you can do to get through the day. It can be taking that shower, making that meal, accomplish one little goal, organize your nail polish by color. I’ve done that.

It’s the little things.

Yeah, it helps.

Since you've been feeling this sense of hopelessness about the state of the country, about politics, how did you get to a good enough place to start writing an album again?

It was tough. It was a little foregoing after the last record because we put so much into recording an album. We really, really care, we really want to make it as good as possible within our limitations, and spend a lot of time on it. When an album is finished, I’m kind of like, "Cool, I don’t have to write any songs for a long time." I can take a break. I can turn off the writer part of my brain. I think taking a break and taking in new things, new media, and new ideas, that's a gestation period that’s necessary to actually produce something later on.

So I did my normal thing of just taking a break, and every now and again when something would interest me, I would write it down in my lyric book and look at it later. The last album, Capture The Flag, felt really rushed. It basically felt like a social experiment where we were wondering: "Can we get this done in this period of time? Oh, cool, we did? Let's never do it again." I think that was in the back of my mind when I started thinking about this album. I knew we were going to have to start chipping away at songwriting a little sooner so that we could take our time, not feel rushed and get it done by the time it’s all supposed to come together. I wrote a couple of personal songs. I wrote "The Ash is Not the End," which has elements in there about feeling hopeless and wondering what to do next. What’s the answer when we’re dealing with all this caustic masculinity that is killing people? And I wrote "Big Words," which is a song about a friendship that didn’t go the way I planned, and being disappointed in that. It took a little while to start to feel fired up again about writing about the politics of being an oppressed person.

I feel like this directly connects to the album title, Wonderful Hell. What we’re living in right now can feel hell-ish, and by using "wonderful" in the title, it conveys a sense of hope…

...that we can get to the other side; that there are still moments of absolute beauty and kindness in this world. There’s also the double meaning of raising that hell yourself. To raise "wonderful hell" is to challenge a f**ked up system because you know things can get better for everyone. So it's a feeling, it's where we are, and it's what we can do.

And it feels good to raise that hell, even if you're doing something small like canvassing or making phone calls. You're contributing a lot to the community in those small acts.

If everyone does something small, it adds up to something big 100%. I totally feel that way. I talk about that a lot when I do workshops and trainings about bystander intervention, creating safer spaces, and calling out your friends when they say something kind of racist or sexist. It’s a small thing, but it actually builds up and makes a big impact over time. You don’t need a bunch of heroes or everyone saving the world all on their own. All of our small actions add up.

How long have you been an activist? Was that something that started early for you?

I came to it late, honestly. I was pretty apathetic growing up. I think when I was young, I knew that some people weren’t treated fairly because of who they were, the color of their skin, or the fact that they were women. But I didn't understand why or what to do about it. I thought it was unfair. I didn’t want anyone to treat me like that, but I was not willing to do anything about it. I actually remember thinking that because I wasn’t able to vote until I was 18, I didn’t have to pay attention because I couldn’t make a difference. Obviously, within the last few years, we've seen such a huge surge in young activist energy and impact that I feel ridiculous for ever feeling that way. But when I was young, I didn’t think I had to pay attention until I was eighteen. Even then, I was still like, "Well, I voted, what else do you want from me?" Activism really did coincide at the start of this band when I started thinking that there's more than just voting; there's more issues than just the issues I face. That's when I became a student of: What's going on that affects me, that affects others, how is it connected, how can I help, how can I ask for help?

The funny thing is that I was always reading BITCH and BUST magazine. I was listening to Bikini Kill, and I felt like, "Yeah, of course I'm a feminist. I want to do what I want." I don't know why I wasn't more active about it. I vividly remember reading an article in BITCH that was saying George W. Bush and his administration were trying to limit access to abortion. After reading that, I thought it was bullshit. They can't even get pregnant. Why the f**k should they have any say at all about what anyone does with their body? That's when I needed to learn and figure out what was going on. It all started in my mid-20s. Hopefully we’ll let people know that it's okay if they're just coming into activism today. Welcome.

Later is better than never. There's a lot to be said about taking the time to educate yourself, and to learn and listen.

That's the key. That journey of education never actually ends. As soon as you really sit with that, it's so much easier to deal with the moments where you make a mistake accidentally or you put your foot in your mouth. People f**k up, people aren't perfect, but once you know that you'll never be perfect, and there's always something you can to learn, it takes away from the stress and shame of not being perfect, which is impossible.

I feel like you guys do something very specific and very important in your music, which is calling out injustices and the people who commit them. Has that always been an important idea for you and for the band?

That’s a cool way to put it. I never really thought about that before. I do remember thinking that this is not the band to be lyrical about something with a lot of metaphors or flowery language. This was the band that if I'm ever going to just say something, this is the time to do that; just f**king say it. What are you mad about? What's going on? Who's responsible? But I don't think about it too hard. If you're just talking about sexism, that's a really huge umbrella. The same goes for feminism, politics, our band—it's just too big. There is a way to talk about the larger issue. I can't address violence against women globally in a song, but I can talk about the disappearance of women from Juárez, Mexico. I can also talk about a specific activist letter that was submitted to the newspaper taking credit for the murder of someone thought to be partially involved in the mass disappearing of women from Juárez. It’s like zooming in on an aspect of a very large story or subject. That interests me very much.

A great example of this is on a song like "On This Stolen Land" where you’re calling out the harmful immigration policies that have been enacted over the past few years. To hear it called out like that, it feels good because it expresses a lot of the discontent that people are feeling.

In that song, I’m basically saying, "You guys, your whole f**king premise is off. Like, you’re starting from the wrong place. How can you argue for what you’re doing now to people at the border when you’re just wrong?"

That’s why Wonderful Hell is really timely. It’s tapping into a lot of what we’re going through right now. But didn’t you write this album before COVID hit the U.S.?

All the lyrics were finished and we were recording before COVID hit. We kind of finished as lockdown started. I feel like the political lyrics are always going to predict the future a little bit. The world isn’t getting better in a perfect, linear way.

If anything, since you’ve written it, it seems like things have gotten worse. Did you have to push the album back, or was it always the plan to put it out at the end of October?

I was really pushing for it to come out before the election. That was always the most likely thing that was going to happen no matter what. But the label made the decision in the days of the pandemic to release it digitally on October 30 and physically in November. I was really adamant about having it out around the time of the election. I was thinking that if we can’t help people get through those few days before, maybe the years after, what is the point of this record?

More than other recordings, that’s what this record is for me. I think it sounds kind of silly to be like, "Oh, I hope people really get a lot out of my record." Whatever, music is subjective, I don’t know if you’ll like it or not, I don’t give a f**k. But that's the vibe that this record gives me, that's what I was feeling while writing it. It was me saying, "Okay, pick yourself off the floor, it’s time to get back to work, there’s still work to do, you can do this, we can do this together. We’ll get through this even though it f**king sucks." Sometimes we need a reminder, especially around election time. People are going to need to remember that we’ll see the other side of it. Other than all the people that the Trump administration will literally kill, we’ll have to find our way to the other side.

Was the rest of the band on board with this?

The cool thing about our band is that it’s very clear that I write the lyrics. I do take suggestions and even sometimes steal phrases from our bandmates. If they say something cool, I make sure to write that down, just for the greater good of pushing an intersectional feminist message. We don’t really get into the nitty gritty very much. Hopefully, that just means that I’m doing okay by them. But in the end, I’m happy to admit that if there’s ever a time when I f**k something up—f**k up an issue, or stick my foot in my mouth—it’s on me, not the entire band. That’s a big reason why I would want to make it clear that I write the lyrics, so they don’t get any heat for something they’re not responsible for.

We also pull an album title from the lyrics because it just makes sense. I scoured the lyrics for possibilities and asked other band members for suggestions, and I kept coming back to Wonderful Hell. Nothing sounded better than that. I think that’s because that’s where I am.

I love the video for "Wonderful Hell," too. I love how one of the first things you see is a VOTE sticker on the notebook. Why do you think it’s so important for people to vote this election year?

On a personal level, even growing up apathetic to politics, I was still like, "Of course I’m going to vote. I’m a citizen of this country. This is what I’m going to do." It’s my right. People have fought for it and died for it, and I don't take that lightly. When I was younger, I would argue with my friends who thought voting was pointless, who thought their vote wouldn't count because it was just one vote. I would argue with them about their mentality. I just didn't understand it. Why wouldn't you want to vote? We get to do this thing. We get to choose the person in charge. That’s cool. That's kind of what our country is all about. I think today, and I think knowing that I have the responsibility of speaking for a band, I completely understand people's apathy and lack of drive to stand in a line for hours and hours, to not get paid because they're not at work, to vote for someone that isn't who they actually want to be running the country. I get that.

But what I've been thinking about lately, my reasons to vote, other than my normal ones, is that I can’t think of a bigger "F**k You" to Trump than Biden winning in a landslide. For Biden winning by so much that an Electoral College f**k up, or people going back on their word, or Russian interference, or voter intimidation, or voter suppression are still overcome and he wins so hard that Trump is just humiliated. That's worth it to me. To be clear, I’m f**king resentful that I have to choose between two old white cisgender men accused of sexual assault or misconduct. That is not a good choice for me. That sucks. But I know that there are people that are suffering more than me, that are more marginalized, that are at higher risk of health issues, are working to be citizens or they’re refugees. There are so many types of oppressed people that need Biden more than I need to be right.

It’s important to vote for someone who has the people’s best interest at heart, and who is willing to take on police brutality, systemic racism, healthcare, and everything else we’ve been dealing with this year and decades before.

You’re right. This vote I’m casting is not for me, and in other years it has been.

Even with a song like "White Lies," which addresses police brutality, I can’t think of a song that’s more reflective of the times we’re living in right now, especially in the wake of George Floyd being killed in May. What were you thinking when you heard about his death?

Can you imagine that I actually wrote that song before all of that went down? I was thinking that I wish I could release this song today or when the initial protests began. I wish I could have released the song as soon as possible so that people had a place to channel their feelings. I believe in that power of music to help us process our feelings, help us verbalize our feelings, give us a place to put our feelings. I know of music's magical powers. It wasn't like "Oh, if only people knew we had a song for them right now." It was like, "People need a song. I want to give them a song. I have a song." But we just couldn't release it. And, unfortunately, we also knew that this [police brutality] isn't going to end before the album comes out because Trump isn't doing anything to lessen police brutality. Statistically, I figured there's probably going to be another murder. It was a tough decision, but we ended up not releasing it. Also, I didn’t want it to seem like we were trying to market off of a tragic death. It’s not about that.

The video for "White Lies" came out pretty recently, and it features artist Landis Expandis. What was it like working with him?

We were one of the thousands of bands trying to figure out: How do you do something like this when you can’t get together? What kind of music video do you make instead? What's appropriate? What doesn't look like everything else that everyone else is releasing? I don't want another sing-along video that looks like it was made on Zoom. That's boring. So what could we do instead? Landis is a friend of mine. He's a Baltimore Legend, a Baltimore staple. He was in the All Mighty Senators. He’s just a really cool guy.

Earlier this year during lockdown, like most artists who are thinking about how they were going to pay rent, some people were coming up with some really ingenious stuff. He was one of those people. He was inventing these characters and making videos about the lockdown and COVID and bringing some levity to a tough situation. I was talking to him the other day for this exclusive interview that I did through my Patreon about how all of a sudden the idea came to me: What if we let Landis make a video? I realized that one of the reasons he appealed to me was because he brings that levity to a serious situation. We’ve also been known to bring humor sometimes to a tough subject because sometimes that's just the way you deal with tough shit. We don't need to see a bunch of Black and brown bodies bleeding in the street to get our message across in this song. I didn't want a video of that. Instead of us having a video of only protest footage in it, I thought why not just center this artist who not only is affected by the issues that I'm talking about in the song, and who's doing something creative, and pay him to do his thing and also give him creative control? It just seemed like a perfect situation of sharing this platform that we have with someone’s voice who deserves to be heard.

Do you have any plans to release more videos in the near future?

Yes. Our next video should be out in November, probably around the physical release date. It’s going to be for the song, "In Your Path." It’s based on the Chilean protests back in 2019, and the chants that this feminist collective used. They’re name is Las Tesis. I got in touch with them to give them a heads up that they’re chants were inspiring to me, and that I was going to use some of their words on my song. I gave them full credit on the album as a way to raise awareness and to use their words instead of speaking for them. They were cool with it. And then I told them that we were going to do a video. I asked them if they had any footage we could use that they would be comfortable with, and they gave us a video that we could incorporate into what we're doing. It was very cool to get them on board. I feel like a lot of those protests fell off of the radar really quickly. I relished the opportunity to redirect people back to it or expose some people to what they're doing if they didn't get to hear about it the first time.

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Repressed on green vinyl to celebrate 20 years of @exoticfeverrecords with new back cover: https://www.exoticfever.com/artists.php?id=115 #punk #diy #diyprojects #feminist #waronwomen #exoticfeverrecords #exoticfever #20years #hardcore #music #baltimore</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/waronwomen/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> War On Women</a> (@waronwomen) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2020-09-28T23:25:20+00:00">Sep 28, 2020 at 4:25pm PDT</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>

You also incorporate lyrics from Shellac’s "Prayer to God" on the opener, "Aqua Tofana." What is it about that song that made you want to sample it?

The words in that song are just so f**king tough. I'm always really fascinated by songs that are really heavy and brutal, but not how we normally think of a brutal song; not musically. I really like the band HUM. They’re the heaviest band and the quietest band in the world at the same time. I like that juxtaposition. It’s just a regular guitar song, but it’s brutal.

Basically, the gist of the story is for the last however many years, I’ve been working at this big amp repair shop with Brooks. I’m not doing it right now because of COVID, but when you work in a small space and you’re listening to music, some albums come on more than others. So that album [Shellac’s 1000 Hurts] would get played a lot. Every time [“Prayer to God”] came on I was like, “Can we cover this? What are the options here?” So I always had it in the back of my mind---and I don't mind stealing little one-liners like that. That’s art, right? I was just like, this perfectly describes how the women in this song would feel.

I think Steve Albini would be fine with that.

He's clearly not singing a feminist anthem. He might not be a straight-up misogynist, but it's still uncomfortable to hear about a man wanting someone to kill his ex-lover who is a woman. And I like that I flipped it around a little bit and had fun with some misandry.

Outside of being an album that addresses social injustices, you also call Wonderful Hell a call to action. What action would you like to see taken?

[Pauses.] Shit. [Pauses.] Because it’s not just about "Go Vote." My thought right now is that I want people to get back to doing the good work. It’s funny. It’s like the call to action is about getting yourself to a place where you can take action again. [Laughs.] There’s not a nice, easy, catchy little phrase. It’s not a simple idea because that looks different for everyone. I just want people to know that they are needed in the fight.

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