Pill Friends – “Bleed” Video (Stereogum Premiere)
Back in 2013, Pill Friends released their debut album, Blessed Suffering, and followed that up the next year with the Fade Into Nothing EP; later this month, the drab-punk Pennsylvania group is back with another new album, Child Sacrifice. If those dark and defeatist titles speak to anything about the band, it’s that it has often served as an outlet for the messiest of emotions over the past few years, an excising of singer and main songwriter Ryan Wilson’s personal demons. His droll voice grounds every Pill Friends song, which often feel like they’ve been locked away for a long while gathering dust. “Bleed,” a full-band recording of a demo from 2013, is stormy yet inviting — it’s a wonder and a testament to the band’s strength that the song, with its chorus of “All that love never killed/ Will never mean anything at all,” still manages to sound so uplifting. Listen and watch a new video directed by Stephen Tringali below.
Child Sacrifice is out 2/12 via Out Of Breath Records. You can pre-order it on tape and vinyl here.