Friendship Commanders announce new album »Bear« out October 10th on Magnetic Eye Records; »Keeping Score / Melt« two-track single streaming!
Nashville, Tennessee based grunge/alternative/hard rock duo Friendship Commanders will release their new full-length album »Bear« on October 10th, 2025 via Magnetic Eye Records.
Watch music videos for the first two singles »Keeping Score« and »Melt« below!
Tracklist:
01. Keeping Score
02. Drain
03. Dripping Silver
04. Melt
05. New
06. X
07. Midheaven
08. Imperfect
09. Found
10. Dead & Discarded Girls
Courtesy of Clarion Call:
Today, Nashville-based heavy duo Friendship Commanders are excited to announce their new album »Bear« out October 10 on their new label home Magnetic Eye Records (pre-order).
The duo is loudly introducing the upcoming release with two dynamic new tracks, »Keeping Score« and »Melt« and their accompaying music videos. Both tracks are out today on all streaming platforms for any playlist shares.
The official video for »Melt« premiered via Decibel Magazine and is now streaming on YouTube. Directed and edited by Jerry Roe, with cinematography by Jarad Clement and Roe, the video was shot at DRKMTTR, an essential Nashville venue where the band has built community and features familiar faces from the local music scene.
»Bear« was co-produced by band members Buick Audra (guitars, vocals) and Jerry Roe (drums, bass) along with their longtime collaborator, Kurt Ballou, who also tracked the instrumental performances and mixed the record. The songs are unified in theme, one that runs throughout the record in various ways: the ever-elusive idea of belonging, where it occurs, and where it absolutely does not.
Photo credits: Jamie Goodsell
The dual singles illustrate the tonal expansiveness contained within the ten-track body of work; there is heaviness and also a kind of lightness. »Keeping Score« sees songwriter Buick Audra confront cycles of women injuring girls due to being threatened by their existence, something she experienced personally. »Melt« addresses the loneliness and confusion that comes with being rejected by members of one’s own gender in adulthood.
Of the singles, Audra says:
“»Keeping Score« was the first song written for »Bear«. I think of it as the mother of the album. When I was a kid, the mother of my best friend, a boy, singled me out as a problem for her son and all the other boys in our skateboarding crew. She was afraid I was corrupting them somehow. She called around and spread non-truths about me to the other parents, some of whom I’d never met. It was devastating, humiliating beyond words. Years later, I realized women in my own generation were doing the same thing to little girls who knew their sons. Little girls! Age seven, eight! Being called “hussies” by grown women! Color me horrified. Color me involved. Now that I can speak for myself, I will also speak for girls like me. Someone should. The propulsive riff on this song is my war cry.”
“»Melt« is about realizing I’ve never really fit with my own kind, something I’ve only come to terms with in the last two years or so. I’ve spent so much time and energy trying to be a woman among women, but at the end of the day, I’m just always over here being too loud. Too much. And yet, somehow also not enough. It’s a stunning paradox. Musically, the song has a sugary quality to it, which is also referenced in the line, ‘that’s how they punch you, sugar over fists.’ This track beats me up because it’s so painfully true, but it’s also a delight to play.”
FC drummer and bassist Jerry Roe says:
“These songs were so exciting to hear when Buick played them for me for the first time – pretty unlike anything we’d ever done up to this point in terms of energy and propulsion. Our music has tended to move either fast or slow while somehow feeling heavy at all times, and these songs lean and move forward in a way that’s much brighter and quite joyful, even through the subject matter. To play them almost feels like being flown through the air towards a gigantic bullseye made of fiery confetti! I can’t wait to play this new album live.”
Written around the realization that she had essentially been kicked out of womanhood, Buick Audra wrote »Bear« to document her awarenesses while cataloging other areas of human connection: art, outsider culture, and dark rock venues – all places where empathy and creativity grow wild. She and Jerry Roe arranged and performed the album to have two sides to it, musically: heavy and light. Salt and sugar. Fire and air. Lost and found. They are elated to share it with the world.
“Friendship Commanders nod to the sludgy, stoner-metal sensibilities of Kyuss and Sleep in their thundering anthem about injustices. Singer Audra’s ethereal delivery is more otherworldly and haunted than lacerating – an approach she favors on Friendship Commanders’ other releases.” — Rolling Stone
“Buick Audra’s riffs carry the weight of doom and sludge metal, but her crystal-clear, melodic singing is as approachable as anything on ’90s alt-rock radio.” — Brooklyn Vegan
“Friendship Commanders needs to be much bigger than it is right now.” — Metal Injection
Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well