Everything you do has me trapped in this loop
I’m spinning around and falling apart
Black and bruised and broken down
These chains that bind may never unwind
The Children’s Crusade steps into the fray with Black, Bruised, and Broken Down, a raw Wax Trax! Style industrial rock record that feels like a series of wounds written into circuitry. Born from Chicago’s underground circuits, Jason Schmal’s one-man studio project, bolstered by a full live band, channels the reckless voltage of the city’s industrial heritage while lacing it with fractured intimacy. Black, Bruised, and Broken Down is a record of ruin and resilience, its bruises worn proudly as proof of survival, its wreckage alive and hardwired to wreak havoc.
The opener, Breaking Down, sets the tone without words. A bruised instrumental stitched together with field recordings, it recalls the disorientation of wandering through a city alley at dawn, uncertain whether the noise is machinery, memory, or menace. This blurred sense of reality persists throughout the album, each track both personal confession and mechanical exorcism.
Mechanical Love drives with relentless repetition, a hymn to devotion turned corrosive. Desire spirals into despair as the song examines the paradox of clinging to something artificial, the devotion binding even as it destroys. The hook grips like a loop of wire, impossible to shake, looping deeper into ruin. From there, All You Take From Me lands with sharpened edges, circling betrayal and manipulation. Its refrain pounds like a hammer: justice spelled out in relentless cadence, each blow a reminder that exploitation comes with consequences.
The record grows darker with Gag Order, a song about building walls that collapse under the weight of temptation. Thrones, crowns, and veils of shame adorn the lyrics, transforming private guilt into stark theatre. For You (Pre-Cursor) drags the descent further, steeped in self-erasure and corrosive sacrifice. The voice feels buried under its own collapse, mourning the disappearance of the self.
Between these eruptions, Fade Away offers another instrumental that lingers like a fever dream. Sinister, strange, and plodding, it carries the dread of being trapped in a nightmare that never quite resolves. That sense of suspension bleeds into For You, where devotion curdles into desperation. Pleas and promises unravel into anguish, leaving the song haunted by broken vows and wasted faith.
The album closes with Confess, the most unforgiving track of all. Here, self-loathing, disillusionment, and spiritual collapse hit hardest. The sense of being a “broken machine” rings through with cold finality, each line steeped in betrayal and corrosion.
Listen to Black, Bruised and Broken Down below and order the album here.
There will be an album release show tonight at Graveface Chicago with local favourites AAAYYYAAA, Morbid Circle, and DJ Scary Lady Sarah—details in the flyer below.
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