PALEFACE SWISS

After several years of persistence, in 2025 PALEFACE SWISS finally got their just rewards. The band's third album "Cursed" was widely praised for its originality, intensity and laudable disregard for genre boundaries, as raging, riff-heavy songs like "Hatred" and "Don't You Ever Stop" smashed their way into metalheads' affections. Somewhere between deathcore, metalcore and furious mainstream metal that owed an internal organ or two to SLIPKNOT, PALEFACE SWISS were forging a fresh path for modern heaviness, and the staggering vocal versatility of frontman Marc "Zelli" Zellweger was the final element that clinched the deal. One year on, "The Wilted" is a four-track stopgap that seeks to keep the fires of enthusiasm burning. For those who smashed up their bedrooms to "Cursed", it will be impossible to resist, and the overwhelming sense that this band are heading rapidly towards world domination will be equally difficult to deny.

The greatest trick that PALEFACE SWISS have pulled is to avoid being associated with any particular metal subgenre. Unbelievably, Wikipedia still has them tagged as a "beatdown hardcore" band, which was always a silly and reductive description, but now just sounds deranged. These songs are brutal and chaotic but also laced with razor-sharp commercial sensibilities. Primarily defined by the pestilent avalanche of riffs spewing from guitarist Yannick Lehmann, "Withering Flower" noisily sums up the Swiss quartet's appeal. Zelli is screaming his head off and firing out dense lyrical wads with untrammeled power, before an insidious alt-metal chorus erupts from the carnage. Several notches more vicious than anything on "Cursed", it is not a complete step forward, but it hints at darker urges that should be satisfied and explored further on future releases. "Let Me Sleep" is equally unhinged and monstrous but driven by an underlying groove that navigates multiple shifts in pace and emphasis, each successive breakdown hitting harder than the one before it.

In a sense, PALEFACE SWISS are accessible despite their own best efforts. "Instrument Of War" leans purposefully into ultra-heavy nu-metal but still comes across as too feral and hostile to be genuinely affiliated with such dated nonsense. Again, hints of metalcore's breezy, melodic tendencies are on full display but underscored by riffs that are as ugly and lobotomized as it gets. Strategically designed to induce violence and shit-eating grins, PALEFACE SWISS's music is making this kind of modern brutality fun again, embracing elements of classic metal and self-conscious modernity, while chucking in a few lethal tunes too. The closing "Everything Is Fine" bears all the hallmarks of elevated post-grunge, but with none of the compromise that haunts that end of the rock scene. Zelli's singing voice, considering how much trauma he must be putting his throat through, is world class, and the songs' melodies are refreshingly potent and not entirely derivative — a small miracle at this point, and another reason to feel hopeful about what PALEFACE SWISS might achieve in the future. Real progress can wait until the band's next album, but until then, "The Wilted" is a more than sufficient demonstration of burgeoning greatness.