“Wrath” begins with an impossible conversation. One person is dead, one is alive, and the person left behind cannot accept forgiveness. By the closing title track, that grief has passed through a sacrificial ritual, self-hatred, theological anger and the fear that guilt can destroy the bond with the person who died.
Zak M wrote Bleached Cross’ second full-length as a ten-song story about grief and loss treated as psychological horror. Death keeps changing the point of view. Sometimes the living character speaks, sometimes the dead do, and the record keeps returning to the same idea: love survives the body, even when the person left behind cannot stop replaying how the death happened. The full commentary below follows that story in Zak’s own words, with Alex C adding production notes where they had something more to say about how the songs came together.
Released July 24, 2026 through New Morality Zine, “Wrath” keeps blackened post-punk and darker wave at its base, with industrial programming, synths, noise rock and extreme-metal parts pushing through it.
Rhythm does a lot of the work. “Lingering Souls” runs on an almost dance-like electronic breakbeat, and “Torment” eventually tears into blast beats and discordant guitars. The choruses stay melodic even when the songs fill up with noise, screams and harsher percussion. A recent Toilet ov Hell review picked up on the same movement between post-punk rhythm, catchy hooks and metal-level intensity, singling out the black-metal ending of “Torment”.
Boy Harsher, Soft Kill, HEALTH, Cold Cave, AFI and Have a Nice Life make sense around the melodic and electronic parts of the record. Portrayal of Guilt, Infernal Coil and Prurient sit closer to its abrasive end. Zak directly brings Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” into the commentary on “Blood Moon”, and David Cronenberg is another part of the horror vocabulary surrounding “Wrath”. The music can move from jangling guitars and dark pop melodies into processed noise, industrial percussion and blackened hardcore without losing the beat underneath it.
Bleached Cross began in the winter of 2019 with Zak and Alex exchanging files between Chicago and San Diego. The band became a full live unit in 2020.
Early self-recorded demos and a split with Shamewave were followed by their self-titled debut LP through Protagonist Music in 2022, then the “Columns of Impenetrable Light” split with Boston’s The True Faith in 2024.
Since then they have toured and shared stages with Frail Body, Secret Shame, Black Magnet, Bongripper, Cloakroom, Deaf Club and Your Arms Are My Cocoon.
“Wrath” was recorded at Bricktop Recording with Andy Nelson during the summer and autumn of 2025. Bleached Cross arrived with the record fully demoed and spent the sessions working heavily on pacing, noise and sound design. Andy recorded and mixed the album and co-produced it with the band. Brad Boatright mastered it, with the album art and layout handled by Triple Dog Studio.
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On the finished recording, Zak Maybaum handles vocals, guitar and synth. Alex Cegielski plays guitar and synth and contributes vocals and programming, with Nic Kuczynski on bass and Cody Ratley providing drums. Francisco Ilabaca and Lowell Shaffer add further synth parts, and Harlee Young contributes guest vocals to “Tomb”. The visual concepts came from Bleached Cross, with Triple Dog Studios handling the design and layout.
One early clue to the whole record came from “Lingering Souls”. Bleached Cross first teased an alternate demo version in early autumn 2025, before the final version appeared as an advance single. Zak says it was the first song written for “Wrath” and directly changed where he wanted the larger story to go. It is also sung entirely from the perspective of the dead.
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Around the release, Bleached Cross played Distress Fest at Subterranean in Chicago on June 28 with Bongripper, Deaf Club, Wretched Blessing and others. They followed it in August with Snag, playing Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Washington DC, Columbus and Chicago between August 4 and 10.
Zak summed up what holds the ten songs together:ย โDownfall and redemption of the self are themes explored over the course of ten tracks, while loveโs ability to reverberate beyond this mortal coil is central to the albumโs 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.โ
Below, Zak M, vocals/lyrics and guitar, gives the complete track-by-track for “Wrath”. Alex C, guitar/synth/programming/vocals, adds his production notes where included.
1. Thorn Crown
The album leans into grief and loss as psychological horror, and this is kind of the setup for all that follows. Thematically, I wanted to start with the inability to accept forgiveness to begin the album. This song is an implied conversation between two people who cannot actually communicate with one another because one is dead and one is still living.
Alex C:ย The first version of this song was intended to be an interlude for the โcolumns of impenetrable lightโ split. We ended up holding it back and it kept evolving while we figured out what to do with it. Once we decided we wanted to use it as the intro track for Wrath it finally started to click and we were able to finish it.
2. Season of the Witch
This song is setting the stage for a sacrificial ritual; a metaphorical deal with someone or something paid in blood to open a line of communication with the dead. The songs that follow this on the album are scattered glimpses into this personโs mind/life as they prepare to perform it and potentially end their own life.
Alex C: This was actually one of the last songs we wrote for the record. I think it ended up being a really good encapsulation of the vibe of the record as a whole. The main noise layer that plays through the verse parts is a combination of two heavily processed guitar parts that I chopped up and looped. I had been sitting on it for a while and was really stoked to be able to finally incorporate that sample into a song.
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3. Blood Moon
This song is about eternal love, devotion, and the idea of fate bonding people together even beyond death, as love is the one thing death is unable to take away from the living. This song was heavily inspired by Bram Stokerโs โDraculaโ as it reflected a lot of the recurring themes in our album.
Alex C:ย This was the first song idea we had that really cemented the direction and โvibeโ of the album in my mind. We kind of stumbled into it, but I was really proud of the balance between the jangly dreamy elements and the more harsh percussion and noise layers.
4. Crucible
This song is about having to make an end of life decision for someone who is slowly dying. It is written in the final moments before having to say your final goodbyes as you reflect on the life you both shared, and the anticipatory grief you feel knowing what is about to happen.
5. Tomb
This is meant to be a mid-album break and a mood track, so to speak. I wrote this song lyrically as a spot to reflect on losing someone, and all of the doubt and hatred of the self that comes with it, especially when you are the one to decide when to end their life. This song again introduces the dead character, this time reassuring the main character what was mentioned earlier: their love for one another will bind them together forever even after their vessel is gone. This is the first time the main character is starting to consider or possibly accept this idea.
Alex C: This track started out as a short interlude to help smooth out the pacing of the album, but we ended up combining it with elements of another unfinished song we had that did not make the cut for the album. In my mind this track is an ode to Depeche Modeโs โeverything countsโ and โstrangeloveโ.
6. Lingering Souls
This song is written entirely from the perspective of the dead, reflecting on their final moments with someone before they passed. The lyrics resonate a core theme of the album meant to remind the living that those who passed are with them always through their bonds shared in life. This is the first song we wrote for the album and directly impacted the direction I wanted the overall narrative to take.
7. Torment
This is an incredibly bleak song, reflecting on the final moments spent with someone before they passed. If Crucible was the before, then Torment is the after. This song specifically laments how death is oftentimes tragic and unpredictable, and tries to reckon with the fallout of that kind of sudden loss. Feeling guilty that you didnโt do enough or could have done more is heavily implied, while circling back to the first track of the album in being unable to forgive oneself for it.
8. Requiem
This song simultaneously has someone accepting defeat with their emotions while for the second time, realizing how love is linking them permanently to the person who has died. โAnd though youโre gone, your love remainsโ is repeating in the foreground as echoes of the negative feelings begin to recess into the background by the end of the track, helping to signal their mindset shift.
Alex C:ย This song went through a lot of changes. At one point it was this slow sludgy heavy kind of song. And then we felt like it might just be more of an interlude, mini song-type thing. But then we drastically changed the drum beat to this driving kick part and everything started falling into place and it quickly evolved into what it is now.
9. The Dark
This song steps a bit outside of what has been explored previously and ruminates on the theological implications of death. Specifically, it highlights the absurdity and cruelty inherent in the belief of god, especially in the wake of an untimely or traumatic death. Some lines imply giving in to dark thoughts, but this can also be read as an empowerment of the self and a rejection of submitting to a higher power when coping with loss.
10. Wrath
This song is meant to pick up after Season of the Witch in that we are back with the character who just performed a ritual to open a line of communication with the dead, but it goes awry. Through the course of the album, the main character has realized even though the vessel of someone they are grieving is gone, the love they shared carries on far beyond death, and in that way they will always be with them, rendering the summoning ritual unnecessary. This song specifically tackles how guilt and all other negative/dark emotions associated with grief or loss can try to consume you or change your relationship with the person who has passed, and you have to kill those thoughts if you want to maintain any semblance of your sanity/life.The only way out is through, and the chorus is really a thesis statement for the entire album: facing your pain head on is the only way to overcome it.
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