BRUISE BATH to Release Self-Titled Album on Strange Mono Records
The Philadelphia band will release the project on Strange Mono Records.
BRUISE BATH, a band based in Philadelphia, has announced plans to release a self-titled album on Strange Mono Records. Alongside the announcement, the group has made the new single Blood On My Tongue available to stream.
On November 6, Philadelphia-based band Bruise Bath will release their Self-Titled album on Strange Mono Records. The band is excited to share the album's lead single 'Blood On My Tongue.' The song debuted at Post-Trash and is on streaming platforms for playlist shares.
Formed in 2021 Strange Mono is a charity record label and distro based in Philadelphia, PA. Specializing in limited edition releases, all proceeds from tapes and 100% of downloads go directly to the artist's choice of benefit. Bruise Bath has picked Ark of Safety. The organization is a LGBTQ+ Emergency & Transitional Housing Program that offers immediate shelter, compassionate care and help with new beginnings in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia gloom band Bruise Bath has been undergoing a lengthy and arduous metamorphosis from its initial existence as a tool of vocalist/guitarist Zak Krone's expression, to its current state as a more collaborative creative ensemble. Drawing influence predominantly from bands like Slint, Pixies, Wind's Poem-era Mount Eerie, Pallbearer, Butthole Surfers, and the perhaps more surprising selections of Korn and The Beach Boys, Bruise Bath steadily crafts exceedingly dark, heavy rock with moaning, reverb-drenched vocals from Krone and singer Gab Landrum. Bruise Bath's new self-titled album, is the culmination of literal years of a growing passion that has spread from one person to six.
Bruise Bath's second LP shows the group at their creative best. Having spent the better part of a decade developing into the sextet it is now, Bruise Bath expanded heavily upon the gloomy, atmospheric, post-metal sound spawned from the near 20 year friendship of Krone and baritone guitarist Daniel Merchant. Not through any unwillingness of Krone's did Bruise Bath spend the last ten years getting to this point, though. More often than it may seem, artists need to pass through the lasting influence of many different musicians and experiences to become what they're truly meant to be. From 2016 to 2020, Bruise Bath released a demo (Introduction), 2 EP's (III and The Leash, The Lash, The Veil) and a previously self-titled album, each work crafted with help from a number of musicians Krone knew from the Philadelphia area. Throughout this period, Bruise Bath played infrequently, with Krone writing all the songs and parts, but actually functioning as the band's drummer and lone vocalist.
After The Leash, The Lash, The Veil, Bruise Bath was still in the process of crafting a more concrete lineup. With Krone, Merchant, and Landrum already locked in, the introduction of drummer Jackson Miller, and help from collaborators Kevin Paschall and Daniil Zadorozhnyy, Bruise Bath produced their next work, Unyielding Optimism. Serving as another effort in their well-established practice of serving up slow dirges of equal parts gloom and post-metal, Unyielding Optimism was four songs of painstakingly delicate guitar strumming and harmonics hung in the air between sparse rhythms at slow tempos. The songs, 'What Future?' (about the death of one of Krone's students to gun violence) and 'Dogcatcher,' both break this mood by swerving into crushingly heavy territory for portions of the track, but each of those parts are still bookended by the Bruise Bath's pre-disposition for soft, slow elegies.
On Bruise Bath, two songs have no drums at all. With the lineup now filled out by guitarist/vocalist Aaron Pekar and bassist Nick Shellenberger (formerly of Cleric), Bruise Bath is in its most creatively centered period yet. Each member asserts an equal level of creative control. Nothing is left on the table, and it makes the arrival of the album feel right on time. Recorded, engineered, and produced by fellow artist and friend of the band, Sean Reilly at Philadelphia's Studio North, the self-titled second LP bears the feeling of friends and family in every fiber of its existence. It's an acknowledgment of a certain feeling of powerlessness brought on by the cruelty of the global ruling class, an understanding, however, housed inside of a larger instinct to survive and persevere. That house is made a home by that survival and perseverance made possible by mutual support and care between people.
'Bruise Bath is about appreciating the wildfire smoke from 500 miles away for blocking out the rays of the sun so that the heat dome boiling your home is slightly mitigated,' the band stated. 'Bruise Bath is about hunkering down with the ones you love because you have no other choice.'
Bruise Bath is in this place now. Their second LP is eight tracks of Bruise Bath's darkest material yet. With mastering by James Plotkin, the album is crushingly heavy, depressed to the point of lethargy, and brimming with a despondency of the collective grief of its members as they mirror back the horrors of the 21st century to a world in perpetual mourning. It is a collective mourning, and Bruise Bath celebrates that mourning as one of the few ways left to connect with each other, and with you.
Bruise Bath Tour Dates
07.30 - New York, NY @ cobra club
07.31 - Boston, MA @ O'Briens
08.01 - New London, CT @ 33 Golden St
08.02 - Pawtucket, RI @ The News Cafe
08.03 - Westfield, MA @ hutghis at the nook
08.05 - Binghamton, NY @ Bundy Museum Annex
08.06 - Akron, OH @ Musica
08.07 - Pittsburgh, PA @ The Station
08.08 - Reading, PA @ Pleasuretone
Bruise Bath Track List
1. Cars on Fire
2. Blood On My Tounge
3. Nonconsensual Intervention
4. (coda)
5. Two Dogs fing
6. To My Love From Your Forlorn
7. Long Gone
8. Pastoral Shrug
Photo Credit: Diane
Photo Credit: Diane
