For their Southern Lord debut Friendship offer up another dose of devastating heaviness, sounding thicker, fuller and more dangerous than ever before. The potent mix remains largely the same, occupying territory that draws from grind, power violence and sludge while maintaining its own offbeat headspace. The delivery is direct, dead-eyed and merciless a la Crossed Out, but the music itself is far more complex. Rhythms convulse and explode while the riffing surges this way and that, veering between laser-guided precision and a kind of grating ill ease that suggests the band are dragging a mangled limb behind them. This all leaves ‘Hatred’ in an exhilarating place: brutally heavy and punishingly immediate, but also deeply confounding when you manage to crack its craggy outer shell and drill down to the noxious gloop beneath.
