Jorge Elbrecht, the prolific indie-world producer and sonic mastermind behind Lansing-Dreiden and Violens, is mostly known for his hazy new wave aesthetic. But his music has always resisted easy classification and traversed genre lines, and in 2014, Elbrecht dipped his toes into metal with the two-song 001 EP under the name Coral Cross. Now, over four years later, he’s reviving the project.

In addition to Elbrecht, Coral Cross consists of Krallice drummer Lev Weinstein and visual artist Max Hooper Schneider, and they play an idiosyncratic form of metal that Elbrecht likes to call “choral thrash.” As he explains:

To me Coral Cross is the most important music I make and the project which allows me to be the most experimental. Since I was old enough to own cassettes I have always been drawn to bands that seemed to push the boundaries of human performance and the limits of equipment to extremes where they don’t sound like their intended supposition — broken as opposed to balanced. There is a kind of speeding guitar & drums-based music that accomplishes this in a way that does not feel like it lives in an ultra-masculine aesthetic place, nor does it feel excessively virtuosic. That’s the kind I’m interested in because it makes me imagine things like ice storms, lightning, flurries of venomous creatures, and falling into an endless trench, yet it allows me to immerse myself in all of that completely without being harmed beyond that of a little hearing loss.

Next month, Coral Cross are finally releasing their debut full-length, Coral Cross – 002, which the trio recorded mostly live at a small studio in Brooklyn. It’ll feature reworked versions of the project’s debut single “The Coldest Steel Slides Across Your Face” and “Ceaseless Gorestreams Paint The Land,” a bonus track from Elbrecht’s 2018’s solo album Here Lies. And today, they’re sharing new song “Emerald Gasp,” which merges heavy aggression and spacey ambient beauty. Listen to it below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Gorestreams Paint The Land”
02 “Rejected Host Elevation”
03 “Emerald Gasp”
04 “Chorus Of Fear-Plagued Bodies Perish”
05 “All Flesh Must Be Removed”
06 “Fossils Unlocked By A Boiling Sea”
07 “A Foul Odor Pervades”
08 “Inhalation Brings Decay”
09 “Disgorging Into The Eyes Of Swarms”
10 “The Coldest Steel Across Your Face Slides”

TOUR DATES:
01/16 Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon w/ Gang Gang Dance

Coral Cross – 002 is out 2/12. Pre-order it here.