Blood seeps into the stone, and darkness emerges…
Forever doing the work of the shadows, Bleached Cross embraces the darkness and transmutes it into a lovely new self-titled album. Treating song as ritual, the band cherry-picks hardcore and screamo aggression and softens it through the lens of shoegaze, pop hooks, and synths. Aggression becomes something both ethereal and confrontational—a grim alchemy declaring beauty in agony; and catharsis in release. Think
Touching upon themes of death with stark imagery (embracing an urn of ashes; the fall of mankind; the desire to open the Hellmouth and end all human despair), this album is lyrically deep and introspective. The melancholy is softened by expert musicianship, manipulating these troubled feelings into a new kind of hybrid sense of emotional state.
Bringing to mind Cold Cave, Soft Kill, Asylum Party, Brotherhood of Pagans, and Portrayal of Guilt, Bleached Cross is a complex, rich offering that reflects the times with sincerity and empathy.
The album opens with the guitars and drums of the tempestuous romance of “Thoughtseize.” Next is the mournful journey of grief and regret, “The Last Embrace,” which is exquisite in its regretful sadness.
“Flesh Prison” is a tenebrous dirge embracing a fall from grace, with “Recurring Nightmare” an unsettling intermezzo of static and distorted voices.
“Mercy” is introduced a sinister sound that grows ever more ominous, leading into a cavernous medieval Hellmouth, as the song laments the exhaustion of despair.
“All Is Dust” shimmers with its sanguine sorrow sounding like a lost song from Asylum Party. This is followed by the sombre post-punk prayer “Field Of Souls.”
“Sorrow” is another interlude, eerie and thunderous, that gives way to the album’s lead single and penultimate track, “Suffer.” a spellbinding darkwave track that is as purifying as it is captivating in its maelstrom of torment.
Watch the video for “Suffer” below:
Bleached Cross’ self-titled debut LP closes out strong with “Dark Ritual,” whose aural atmosphere is the perfect soundtrack to a bit of midnight necromancy.
Listen to the album below:
Bleached Cross is out now. Order Here
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