We are extremely proud and honored to announce the release the cassette version of Hatred - the debut album from elusive and mysterious experimental powerviolence terrorists Friendship (also known as the Friendship Collective).
After releasing the I&II compilation on tape and vinyl earlier this year to critical acclaim and bringing the band's crippling powerviolence/grind destruction to worldwide attention - we now prepare to release the cassette version of the band's harrowingly bludgeoning debut album, while Daymare Recordings from Japan will handle the CD and Southern Lord the vinyl wordlwide.
Again, as in the case of I&II - Hatred is a no-prisoners type of release where the listener is deconstructed and terminated by the band in just under thirty minutes with a barrage of aural violence and deliberate destruction that seem both endless and implausible in their absurd enormity. Once again Friendship show no mercy toward any life form put on their path and instead proceed to literally annihilate the senses of those who dare to sit down with their music with their own megaton-formula of highly refined and telluric alloy of terrorist powerviolence and monstrous grindcore that devours everything in its path. As with the tradition of most extreme metal and punk Japanese bands, Friendship's formula also displays a high degree of "mindlessness", contamination, and recklessness as it unfolds its ridiculously enormous barrage of sonic violence with unseen force, all while also shocking the listener with an insane sense of purpose and of highly deliberate creativity. While their music is monstrous in its aggression and sheer brutality, it also comes from a place where aesthetic perfectionism, the inclusion of contaminating genres like noise, and extreme sludge and doom metal, and a meticulous attention to details and innovation, have yielded something truly absurd in sheer enormity - something both implausibly apocalyptic in quantitative violence and grandiose in its undisputable artistry. Once again, the band have been able to coerce together the mindless hardcore/punk approach of fast heavy bands like Hatred Surge, Column of Heaven, Nails, and Full of Hell, and the nuclear fission-like doom collapse of Japanese extreme sludge masters Corrupted, ultimately materializing something unseen and totally futuristic in ugliness and size.
Hailing from the Chiba Prefecture of Japan, and with members also residing in Tokyo, Friendship came out of nowhere and even with an extremely shy and elusive kind of approach toward the press, visibility, and stages, they have proceeded to take on the world by storm with their life-taking recorded output and with their infamously soul-crushing live performances in their native motherland. As such Hatred stands as yet another harrowing decalaration of war toward all existence, and as a continuation in a legacy that while still young and merely started already appears to be undisputed and highly unapologetic.
With blunt force trauma mastering curtesy of Brad Boatright at Audiosiege, and a stark and cryptic looking packaging presentation coming with black on black spot UV/gloss varnish graphics, Hatred is now available on cassette from Sentient Ruin and shipping worldwide (get it on our store or Bandcamp), while CDs are available through Daymare Recordings, and vinyl from Southern Lord.
