Friendship Commanders release new video for "DEAD & DISCARDED GIRLS"
Friendship Commanders release new video for "DEAD & DISCARDED GIRLS"
New album BEAR out now on Magnetic Eye Records
Touring the West Coast Now
Watch: “DEAD & DISCARDED GIRLS” video on YouTube
Stream: BEAR on all digital platforms
Today Nashville-based heavy melodic duo Friendship Commanders are excited to share their new band-created video for “DEAD & DISCARDED GIRLS,” a powerful closer from their new album BEAR, out now via Magnetic Eye Records (order). “DEAD & DISCARDED GIRLS,” which was directed by the band's Jerry Roe, debuted today at Metal Epidemic and can be shared on YouTube.
The haunting track was inspired in part by the 1997 murder of fourteen-year-old Reena Virk and in part by vocalist Buick Audra’s reflections on empathy, specifically, the human tendency to withhold it unless we personally relate to someone’s suffering. The album’s dedication, “For all of the bad daughters,” originates from this song. The band is intentionally releasing the video on November 14, the anniversary of Virk’s death.
Read an exclusive essay by Buick Audra on the inspiration behind the song at Atwood Magazine.
Released October 10 on Magnetic Eye Records, BEAR explores the ever-elusive idea of belonging, where it exists, and where it doesn’t. Audra wrote the record after realizing she had been, in her words, “kicked out of womanhood, if I was ever part of it in the first place.” The album opens and closes with songs about girls and the harm they endure at the hands of other girls and women. BEAR was co-produced by Buick Audra (vocals, guitar) and Jerry Roe (drums, bass) with longtime collaborator Kurt Ballou, who tracked the instrumentals and mixed the record.
On the single, Buick Audra shares:
“I learned of Reena’s story through the work of Rebecca Godfrey, who wrote a book about this horrific event, and I was struck by this tale of exclusion, violence, and ultimately death that befell a kid who just wanted to fit in. I know it well, and I also know how little empathy women and girls are sometimes able to extend to their own kind. I’ve felt it all my life. In this track, I’m trying to say, look at what we do to each other. I recorded the vocals for ‘DEAD & DISCARDED GIRLS’ last year on November 14, in tribute to her. The track spans the broadest dynamics on the whole record, going from an intimate opening to a crushing middle section, audibly reflecting the track’s message: care about someone else; care about her. Reena was drowned, so the song and video are both centered around water.”
Jerry Roe adds:
“I tend to see visuals and work off my gut instinct to begin with when it's time to make a video for a song, but I leaned harder on that than anything else this time. Rather than get overly specific or directly reference what this song was about, I wanted to involve water and the type of foliage that lives around bodies of water. Contrasted against the dark black and blue predominantly slow-motion performance footage that's made to look as if we're underwater ourselves, my goal was to sort of present souls that have been lost to the water as living on underneath and in the earth forever. Not trapped, but there to remind us always of what should be and wasn't.”
Friendship Commanders are currently on a U.S. Fall tour in support of BEAR. Tickets are on sale now.
Friendship Commanders Fall Tour Dates:
11.14 - Santa Cruz, CA @ The Jury Room
11.15 - San Francisco, CA @ Kilowatt
11.16 - Palmdale, CA @ Transplants Brewing Co.
11.19 - Bellingham, WA @ Waterfront Tavern
11.20 - Portland, OR @ High Water Mark
11.21 - Seattle, WA @ Bad Bar
11.23 - Laramie, WY @ Ruffed Up Duck
Photo credit: Jamie Goodsell
