Paleface Swiss grows more and more powerful with each passing year but 2025 will undoubtedly bring great success for this Swiss powerhouse. I would bet money that a horror movie will use first track "Un Pobra Nino Murio" (translation: "A Poor Child Died") as their trailer background music. A half-dead body dragging itself along, haunting church synth increasing in volume and bass rattling until the bloody details of its fate are in full focus, the watcher's eyes glued to the screen as frontman Marc "Zelli" Zellweger's guttural vocals spin around in a tornado of bleakness. It is one of the most unnerving, unsettling tracks, let alone album introduction, that I've ever digested. The 2022 album Fear and Dagger featured an introduction suitable for a Saw movie, but this one is pure atmospheric TERROR.
I was already so pumped for this record, as Paleface has become one of my favorite deathcore bands, constantly pumping out music and collaborations while hopping on tour runs to grace America with their lively performance. When I last saw them at Milwaukee Metal Fest in May, the band played one of the most energetic and exciting sets of the weekend, seamlessly working through technical difficulties and delivering goofy quips in between songs.
No matter how heavy this band gets, one of my favorite things about them is their commitment to keeping metal fun. Innumerable bands take themselves so seriously, they suffocate with their heads up their own asses. Paleface couldn't be more opposite of that with Zelli's classic scream-giggles, Swiss-cheese jokes and smiles. Consistently playing with intriguing mixtures of vocal distortions and blast beats, we've watched the wildly unique vocal style of Zelli transform into what I'm now hearing on new 2025 record Cursed and his development is truly something to behold.Â
After the horror show (a positive note coming from myself) of the first track, second track "Hatred" rapidly shows off some of the best blast beats I've heard from Cassi thus far, with guitarist Yannick Lehmann and bassist Tommy Lee each showcasing their own abilities to create a setting of non-stop deathcore destruction. We get the aforementioned scream giggle from Zelli and it is glaringly obvious that his vocal capabilities have crossed a new threshold as he displays malicious growling screams. The third and fourth tracks "…and with hope you'll be damned" and "Don't You Ever Stop" go in a bass-forward nu-metal direction that I'm not totally surprised to hear, since Zelli's vocal style is reminiscent of rap/rock but they both still feel they belong in the album even if they aren't my favorite.Â
Halfway through we get "Enough" and immediately, I've had enough. I had to pause this track to mourn what the deathcore masterpiece I thought this record was going to be. I know I'm going to be lumped in with the "haters" they are addressing in these lyrics but I'm willing to take that risk. I'm disappointed in the 8th-grade level lyrics with a one dimensional, Soundcloud-esque beat behind them because I've heard what this band is capable of. I respect their talent but I wish this one would have stayed in the drafts because it ruins the entire album's flow directly in the middle of it. Sometimes the best way to beat the haters, is to ignore them and just be better.
After "Enough", we get "Youth Decay" in which we get early 2000s rock clean vocals (unsure of who they are coming out of) for the first minute, broken up by the classic Paleface sound, before violently launching an Avenged Sevenfold sounding riff. I'm not sure if the previous track just left a bad taste in my mouth but I'm having an incredibly hard time digging these despite being obsessed with this band for the last three years.
"My Blood On Your Hands" is another horror-sounding track and I'm relieved to hear that there is more of this disturbing vibe and I wish it was longer than 1:40. Zelli gives the scream of the fucking century, his throat rattling as if we're listening to him choke on his own blood. "Love Burns" is hard to pin down genre-wise between classic rock-sounding guitar pieces, background shouts, screaming and chugging guitars. "River Of Sorrows" definitely conveys a sadness within the lyrics and cleans, before breaking into more rap and then back into screaming. I really like the song starting at 3:30 where the guitars pick up the gloom and sadness, carrying listeners down the river.
Overall, I think this was a creative miss by Paleface Swiss. The record would have benefitted from a more cohesive structure and agreement upon one or two genres to tackle instead of trying to dip their toes into a thousand different elements without taking the time to figure out how to properly fit them together.
