Review
Destruction machine Paleface Swiss is back with a brand-new album released through Nuclear Blast’s Blood Blast Distribution. CURSED marks a new peak for the Zurich-based quartet, showcasing their commitment to unbridled sonic evolution and their refusal to follow the standard Deathcore formula. Blending old-school Nu Metal sounds, modern, aggressive takes on Deathcore, and an uneasy touch of melodic sensibility, they’re setting themselves as one of 2025’s biggest rising stars.
CURSED opens with a chill-inducing reinterpretation of the Canarian lullaby ‘un pobre niño murió’, setting a morbid and uneasy tone for the album, lulling you into a false sense of uneasy security before plunging you into a nightmare. This haunting intro takes us perfectly into the first track and single, ‘Hatred’. While Nu Metal influences are evident in this song—particularly in Zelli’s lyrical delivery, which feels like a modernized, Deathcore-infused take on Slipknot—the band’s full immersion into the 2000s syncopated, hip-hop-driven groove comes with the next song, ‘…and with hope you’ll be damned’.
Despite recent criticisms accusing the band of becoming too soft, CURSED unequivocally disproves such claims, going as far as to directly address these claims on ‘Enough?’. The album’s fifth track is split into two distinct sections. The first part sees Zelli dropping bars over a trap instrumental, subtly accompanied by guitars, but just as the track reaches its apogée, Lehmann takes us back to that old-school shit. With a punishing assault of scratches, groovy riffs, and an insatiable hunger for destruction, they blend their iconic take on Beatdown Deathcore with chaotic Nu Metal sonorities.
This relentless approach carries through to ‘Youth Decay’, a track reflecting on the disillusionment of leaving youth behind. Paleface Swiss mirrors this sentiment in the song’s structure, momentarily setting aside unbridled fury in favor of anthemic choruses. These choruses feel like rose-tinted memories of a time when the world felt less hateful—a time when growing older didn’t mean growing colder.
The album then dives headfirst into its most extreme song with ‘My Blood On Your Hands’, a pure Beatdown Hardcore assault that showcases the raw intensity Paleface Swiss has been cultivating. Barely reaching 1:40, this bold choice for the album’s second single delivers stripped-down, poignant lyrics and instrumentation. And who could miss the band’s now-iconic, award-nominated, alligator-like growl during the final breakdown?
The journey concludes with the album’s two most emotionally devastating tracks, ‘Love Burns’, and ‘River of Sorrows’, both accompanied by interconnected music videos with ‘My Blood On Your Hands‘. Together, they unravel the gut-wrenching narrative of a breakup spiralling into a partner’s suicide. These songs serve as perfect counterparts: ‘Love Burns’ captures the searing anger and self-justification of a relationship at its breaking point, grappling with the emptiness that follows. Meanwhile, ‘River of Sorrows’ delves into the aftermath—the unbearable void and longing for a lost partner’s presence, amplified by the singer’s character discovering their partner’s lifeless body, hanging over a toppled chair. ‘My Blood On Your Hands‘ serves as a metaphorical illustration of what happened before these last 2 tracks, with the now-dead partner being accused of having the singer’s blood on their hands, that they’re the reason of the breakup. It adds even more to the sadness at the end of the last track.
In conclusion, Zelli, Yannick, Tommy, and Cassi gave us the most mature version of the Paleface Swiss sound, masterfully juxtaposing uncontained brutality, anthemic choruses and longing melodies. CURSED feels like the most natural continuation of their discography, leaning harder into their Nu Metal influence, while also pushing the boundary of Deathcore’s emotive side.