Inside a sweltering room in Leeds, 1,000 persons are hyperventilating en masse. As Paleface Swiss vocalist Marc ‘Zelli’ Zellweger leans over the barrier, rapping, screaming and gasping his approach by an virtually comically brutal Nail To The Tooth, the gang hold tempo with each phrase, eyes bulging, fists punching the air. The riff that follows is filthier than a slaughterhouse, earlier than Zelli randomly bellows the weirdest mosh name you’ll hear all yr: “We’re the explanation for the holes within the Swiss cheese!”
“The singalong stuff is one thing that will get me on a regular basis,” Zelli tells Hammer later with an enormous grin. “That’s the factor I dwell for. I don’t assume that my fashion of vocals is tremendous straightforward to sing alongside to!”
Solely a yr earlier, Paleface Swiss have been opening reveals in Europe, as third help to Bay Space hardcore group Lionheart, after Suicide Silence and Kublai Khan TX. Since then, they’ve performed large phases at Las Vegas’ Sick New World and Spain’s Resurrection festivals, whereas the primary half of 2025 has seen them tour the UK, Europe and the USA – this time as headliners.
Lots of the venues within the UK have been upgraded, such was the demand for tickets; their dwell reveals are an lively whirlwind of enjoyable and brutality. In just a few days they’ll hit the street once more, this time to the European competition circuit, with a present on the principle stage at Bloodstock Competition.
“Truthfully, I do not know,” Zelli responds once we ask him what’s behind their sharp, latest upswing. “And I do not actually wish to know why individuals like us, as a result of then you find yourself doing it for them somewhat than what feels genuine.”
The twenty-five year-old singer is chatting to Hammer from his Zurich house, wearing a dishevelled black T shirt, his ice-white, bleached hair in sharp distinction to an enormous, black and white skull-emblazoned tapestry that’s hanging on the wall behind him. He’s pleasant and humorous, admitting that the band are nonetheless attending to grips with being one of many hottest rising offers in metallic.
“In direction of the top of the European tour, for the very first time in my life, I misplaced my voice,” he says. “We performed our longest set we’ve ever performed, and performed so many reveals in a row with barely any off-days. I needed to make the modifications and changes that my voice and my physique wants… it’s a studying course of.”
Paleface Swiss shaped in Zurich in 2017 by mutual pals, however issues began ramping up after they launched their second album, 2022’s Concern & Dagger. Rapturously obtained by deathcore and beatdown aficionados, it was an improve on the fledgling violence of their early materials – a mixture of hardcore, deathcore and thrash that felt genuinely unhinged and unpredictable.
They adopted it up earlier this yr with Cursed, an much more dynamic album that ramps up the aggression and introduces a very good dollop of nu metallic into the combination, culminating in latest single River Of Sorrows – a grungey ballad with a blistering center eight. It’s a volte face that reveals the band’s ever-expanding vary.
“I do not actually know why the deathcore identify is so connected to the band’s identify, as a result of we by no means had the everyday deathcore breakdowns and vocals,” shrugs Zelli.
There’s, nonetheless, one clearly distinguishable affect of their sound. At its most potent, Cursed resembles Slipknot at their most wicked. The masked band obtained Zelli hooked on metallic in his early teenagers, and he not too long ago met drummer Eloy Casagrande and bassist Alex ‘Vman’ Venturella backstage at a competition.
“I used to be proper subsequent to Clown’s inexperienced room, and he was like, ‘Excuse me, can I enter my room?’” Zelli laughs. “I might by no means be courageous sufficient to say, ‘What’s up?’”
Certainly a help slot with Slipknot is on Paleface’s bucket listing?
“We’re engaged on it!”
Zelli credit bands similar to Slipknot and Mushroomhead with serving to him channel and calm his teenage angst. “I am not good at speaking about feelings,” he admits. “I used to be strolling by the streets of Switzerland listening to this actually aggressive music, and I felt higher. I’m not as offended as I could possibly be due to the music. It took away all of the anger that I had.”
Now he hopes Paleface’s music could have the identical impact on others. The lyrics of their songs immediately sort out psychological well being, despair and suicide, matters that are given quick shrift of their house nation.
“Nobody actually talks about psychological well being in Switzerland,” he sighs. “It is extra about careers and getting cash.”
A lyric on one in every of Paleface’s heaviest tracks, Judgment Day, pours scorn on this truth: ‘The neutrality Switzerland is thought for globally / Doesn’t apply to Paleface / They got here to destroy.’
“I do not wish to have the everyday Swiss behaviour in relation to psychological well being,” he says, explaining the lyric. “Once I wish to say one thing, I simply say it straight.”
The horrific video for River Of Sorrows is probably the most effective instance of their uncompromising strategy to artwork, depicting a grief-stricken Zelli sitting in his bed room subsequent to a dangling physique. He wrote the tune a couple of break-up, however hopes the followers will relate to the imagery in their very own approach. “It doesn’t must be my imaginative and prescient. In the event you see one thing else and it helps you, purpose reached,” he says.
Their angle is obvious on 666, the intro on their 2023 album, Concern & Dagger, which accommodates a recording of a fan having a schizophrenic episode. The fan, who had been documenting their episodes in an effort to raised perceive their situation, requested if the band wished to make use of it in one in every of their songs.
It’s a tough, harrowing and deeply private pay attention, its affect not too dissimilar to Korn’s 1994 observe, Daddy, which noticed vocalist Jonathan Davis screaming and crying within the vocal sales space as he recalled abuse he skilled as a baby by the hands of a babysitter.
“I wished individuals to know that we didn’t wish to simply generate profits with it, however we wished to open individuals’s eyes,” says Zelli, who explains that at the beginning the band have been uncertain if it was the suitable factor to do. They determined the recording was a chance to unfold consciousness of the situation. “We tried to deal with this subject with a lot respect, and the response has been wonderful.”
Zelli needs the Paleface Swiss neighborhood to be a protected area for followers. The observe Sufficient?, from Cursed, is a direct problem to the poisonous masculinity that’s rife inside nonetheless male-orientated heavy scenes: ‘You might be tall and also you bang in your chest and also you solely hearken to aggressive music / And I am sitting right here, and I am singing about my very own emotions…’
“I’m not a fan of actually masculine behaviour. I’m from Switzerland, one of the vital peaceable international locations on this planet.” He snorts. “I grew up being surrounded by cows.”
The band not too long ago triggered a stir when Zelli and drummer Cassi shared a mid-set kiss onstage. “You can not consider what number of robust guys walked out each single evening,” he says. “That proves to me that I’m doing the suitable factor. We lose so many followers, however I don’t need them to be our supporters. Please simply fuck off.”
That bloody-minded dedication to their morals and imaginative and prescient will solely propel Paleface Swiss to better heights. Though they work with the Nuclear Blast-affiliated Blood Blast to distribute their music, the band stay DIY and unsigned. From merch, to administration and music movies, it’s a small, close-knit workforce of pals and prolonged household that run the present behind the scenes. “We wish to hold it that approach for so long as doable,” affirms Zelli.
Success in any respect prices, he says, is just not the sport plan. Regardless of their rise, Paleface know that gradual and regular will guarantee their longevity. “I wish to attain the very high,” Zelli smiles. “However by having as a lot enjoyable and making it as wholesome as doable.”
Cursed: The Full Version is out now
