Photo credit: Luke Hallett
Life have shared ‘Friends Without Names’ ahead of the potential release of their third album next year. Recorded in the dead of night with producer Luke Smith in a chapel below Hull, vocalise Mez Green says the song ‘is the anchor and and blueprint for our next record. In a remote part of Eastern England, close to the river Humber, we performed this track as if we were in trance; vibrating in a constant musical crescendo. Our aim was to push ourselves and harness differing time zones whilst giving in to the moments of beauty, horror, love and chaos depicted by the song’s lyrics.’
The song reflects this disorderly experience with angular, post-punk guitar riffs being joined by hypnotic drums and spoken-word delivery from Mez as he talks about biting his lip as he repeatedly spits out the words: ‘I really miss ya’. As with most Life songs, there’s a grounded realism in the lyrics that sums up the state of the nation – and how the overlords in power couldn’t care less: ‘Hope goes up, hope falls down, burn like fire, this new town’. The song ends in suitably intense fashion as the words ‘Friends without names, they’re all the same to me’ are repeated over a clattering fusion of darkly tinged noise.
