Nashville hard-rocking power duo Friendship Commanders return with "KEEPING SCORE," the blistering first single from their forthcoming album, "BEAR," set for release on October 10 via Magnetic Eye Records. A thunderstorm of pounding hard rock, alternative crackle, and grit, this track is a jarring gut-punch of personal reckoning wrapped in scorching riffs and emotional defiance.
"KEEPING SCORE" blasts open the doors with a snarling sense of urgency, from the guitarist-vocalist Buick Audra, who doesn't so much sing as confront. The lyrics raise a painfully specific but universal question of women's legacy, the self-perpetuating nature of women injuring younger women out of jealousy or fear. Based on her own personal experience, Audra gives a fearless and raw performance, transforming pain into purpose and a superpower.
Co-produced by Audra and bandmate Jerry Roe, who doubles on drums and bass, the song benefits from the band's raw, instinctual unity as a group that fully understands its sound. It's an urgency in the playing that is honed by the unmistakable imprint of Kurt Ballou, the longtime collaborator who recorded the instrumentals and mixed the record. Guided by his hand, the track is still punishing and precise, like a hammer wielded with surgical precision. "KEEPING SCORE" not only debuts "BEAR," but also wages war on silence. It is a record about belonging, about finding it, and being denied it. And if this single is anything to go by, "BEAR" is here to crush the truth beneath the weight of riffs and revelation.
Accompanying the single is a strong music video that visually corresponds with the rawness of the single. Slated to dig deeper into themes of identity, harm, and healing, the entire album, "KEEPING SCORE," stands fiercely on its own, an anthemic, cathartic roar for everyone who has ever felt that they never fit in. For those of us who want rock music with soul, scars, and a scream that counts, Friendship Commanders are keeping score, and they've got one hell of a story to tell.
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