Starting off as a random thought since 'Empty the Clip' was slowly dying and becoming inactive, @depthstrida & me jokingly said "let's start up a collective with only active people in it, let's change the game". Not far from that thought we asked our first members to join. [1/?]

On the 8th of august, 2018 we officially started 'MERCENARIES'. Sailor and sulph were our first members to join and some days later even istasha joined. Slowly but steadily our first track came together and we had one last task to do. Get a goddamn name for that badboy. [2/?]

So I came up with the original idea to just call the track "Homicide" because I'm that creative. Shortly after that, depthstrida received a message by papa sleep asking if we'd need a designer for our team. Exactly one month after creating mercenaries, papa sleep joined. [3/?]

To this day, papa sleep still manages most of our distributions, social media accounts and so on, big ups for that. Wondering how we got into our soldier-theme? A simple joke made by sailor got us thinking. [4/?]

Following that, we quickly got our next release going. 'SIRENS!' should be our next banger. This time even istasha, sulph and sleep got on. Quickly growing in size, we dropped our next banger in november of 2018. "3rd Division" it was. [5/?]

Having dropped "3rd Division", we knew more members could come in handy as we really wanted to expand. Soon after that drop we added apache and propane. Having those two strong members in our team aswell, we could really start working on new projects. [6/?]

Last year went by so fast, mugxtsu as a ft. on stakeout, lord distortion and navvvi joined on time to shine, apache left cuz of some personal stuff, shardem joined and in june we sadly decided to kick sailor from our collective which I'm still sad about today. [7/?]

Navvvi to this day, mixes almost all of our songs and really, REALLY affected our quality. Releasing assemble anthem, mugxtsu joined 'MERCENARIES'. His talent for hooks and singing in general really gave us a new opportunity to implement his thoughts into our songs. [8/?]

Not long after that, w a s joined and fully produced truck stop on his own. Sometime before this we sadly kicked shardem from the collective due to inactivity caused by misunderstandings.
Lets slow down a little bit here, slowly walking towards our first album 'BLACK CASH'. [9/?]

As some of you might remember, our first statement about black cash was this tweet from all of us. We really wanted to start something C R A Z Y. We didn't know how much of a hustle this album would turn out to. We needed a third main-designer. Lefant it was. [10/?]

Setting up sheets, adding beats, having some talk about what we could make the setting about. We ended up filling our google-docs sheet with beats and slowly but steadily our vocalists started recording. Soon following, we got our first cover ideas from propane and sleep [11/?]

Sadly looking through all of this messy messages from all of us I can only find our current cover or small variations for black cash, I will eventually dig up some secrets in the future...

We. dropped. 'BLACK CASH'.

[12/?]

And if that wasn't already enough, we had venting palace join with martyr. A producer and vocalist with a lot of potential. Propane drew every single one of us on paper and prepared sick characters for us. We all know what happened after that.

Mercenaries. Sticker. Pack.

[13/?]

Little throwback right here. Depthstrida and me sitting in a vc, joking about the idea to start a collective.
Get that in your head. From a small idea, to the bloody reality. [14/?]

We made a fucking album.
We made a fucking sticker pack.
We built friendships.
We did something, barely any other collective has ever reached. [15/?]

At this point I wanna thank @depthstrida personally for getting me where I'm currently at and sitting with me in vc on that day. That day we launched mercenaries. Helping me through hard decisions regarding the collective and having an open ear. [16/?]

I want to thank @sleepspiritual, @PRXPVNE and @Teufelsflamme for mostly being in charge for our visuals and the amazing artwork we had since we started. Really, thank you.

Big thanks to @fuckapache, @fukksailor and @shxrdxm for being there when we needed you guys the most, even tho it sometimes didn't work out well. Was a pleasure having u guys.

Also thanks to @istashathescrub, @SULPH_etc, @sleepspiritual for sticking with us since day one. This only shows that you really were up for this thing we created.

Big fucking thanks to @istashathescrub, @SULPH_etc, @ventingpalace, @MUGXTSU, @_navvvi_, @Distortion330, @depthstrida, @PRXPVNE and @sleepspiritual for your amazing vocals, without you guys MERCENARIES would just be some dead collective by now.

Thanks to @istashathescrub, @fukksailor, @wasbeatz, @depthstrida, @ventingpalace and @SULPH_etc for always delivering us the weirdest, deepest and hardest beats we used or scrapped. Every single one of them was special in one way or another.

Lastly, I want to thank you. Yeah, you. Thank you for reading through this. This still seems really unbelievable to me. This means a lot to me. Every listener, every customer, every fan, every member of mercenaries.

Thank you.

Lets hit another 2k. :)
- MERCENARIES -

In case I forgot anyone, anything, im sorry. I wrote this out of my heart & head.

Thanks to @AbyssalSounds, thanks to @B3rmudaEnt.