BLEACHED CROSS have spent the last several years refining a sound rooted fully in collapse and catharsis. Formed remotely between Chicago and San Diego in the winter of 2019, the band began as an exchange of files and ideas between collaborators Zak and Alex before evolving into a full live band in 2020. Since then, BLEACHED CROSS have steadily built a reputation through emotionally overwhelming live sets and a sound that blurs the lines between post-punk, industrial music, darkwave, blackened hardcore, and noise rock.
On their newest full-length, “Wrath”, due July 24, 2026 via New Morality Zine, the Chicago band push every element of their sound further than before. Across ten tracks, “Wrath” explores grief as both psychological horror and spiritual transformation, tracing a narrative centered around loss, guilt, death, and the struggle to preserve love in the aftermath of tragedy. Ritualistic imagery, existential dread, and meditations on mortality run throughout the album, but beneath its crushing atmosphere is something deeply human: the attempt to survive unbearable loss without allowing it to hollow you out completely.
“Downfall and redemption of the self are themes explored over the course of ten tracks, while love’s ability to reverberate beyond this mortal coil is central to the album’s core, and the inflection point at which Bleached Cross offer us to consider how one can both come to terms with death, and heal in the shadow of loss.” - Zak
Recorded at Bricktop Recording with Andy Nelson during the summer and fall of 2025, “Wrath” was approached with an obsessive level of preparation and detail. Entering the studio with a fully demoed version of the record, the band focused heavily on tension, pacing, and sound design, often creating heaviness through atmosphere and noise rather than sheer volume alone. The result is BLEACHED CROSS' most cinematic and immersive release yet: an album that can feel suffocating and violent one moment before opening into massive hooks and moments of fragile clarity the next.
The record also represents the culmination of years spent carving out a distinct identity within underground heavy music. Following early self-recorded demos and a split release with Shamewave, BLEACHED CROSS released their self-titled debut LP in 2022 through Protagonist Music, later followed by 2024’s “Columns of Impenetrable Light” split with Boston’s The True Faith. Along the way, they’ve toured and shared stages with artists like Frail Body, Secret Shame, Black Magnet, Bongripper, Cloakroom, Deaf Club, and Your Arms Are My Cocoon, while continuing to evolve beyond easy genre classification.
Dark, mournful, and deeply sincere, “Wrath” captures BLEACHED CROSS at their most refined and emotionally devastating. It’s a record consumed by death, but ultimately driven by the possibility of redemption. An acknowledgment that grief changes you permanently, and that surviving it means learning how to carry love and pain at the same time.
FFO: AFI, Have A Nice Life, HEALTH, Cold Cave
