Inside a sweltering room in Leeds, 1,000 people are hyperventilating en masse. As Paleface Swiss vocalist Marc ‘Zelli’ Zellweger leans over the barrier, rapping, screaming and gasping his way through an almost comically brutal Nail To The Tooth, the crowd keep pace with every word, eyes bulging, fists punching the air. The riff that follows is filthier than a slaughterhouse, before Zelli randomly bellows the weirdest mosh call you’ll hear all year: “We are the reason for the holes in the Swiss cheese!”
“The singalong stuff is something that gets me all the time,” Zelli tells Hammer later with a huge grin. “That’s the thing I live for. I don’t think that my style of vocals is super easy to sing along to!”
Only a year earlier, Paleface Swiss were opening shows in Europe, as third support to Bay Area hardcore group Lionheart, after Suicide Silence and Kublai Khan TX. Since then, they’ve played massive stages at Las Vegas’ Sick New World and Spain’s Resurrection festivals, while the first half of 2025 has seen them tour the UK, Europe and the USA – this time as headliners.
Many of the venues in the UK were upgraded, such was the demand for tickets; their live shows are an energetic whirlwind of fun and brutality. In a few days they’ll hit the road again, this time to the European festival circuit, with a show on the main stage at Bloodstock Festival.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Zelli responds when we ask him what’s behind their sharp, recent upswing. “And I don’t really want to know why people like us, because then you end up doing it for them rather than what feels authentic.”
The twenty-five year-old singer is chatting to Hammer from his Zurich home, dressed in a baggy black T shirt, his ice-white, bleached hair in sharp contrast to a huge, black and white skull-emblazoned tapestry that’s hanging on the wall behind him. He’s friendly and funny, admitting that the band are still getting to grips with being one of the hottest rising deals in metal.
“Towards the end of the European tour, for the very first time in my life, I lost my voice,” he says. “We played our longest set we’ve ever played, and played so many shows in a row with barely any off-days. I had to make the changes and adjustments that my voice and my body needs… it’s a learning process.”
Paleface Swiss formed in Zurich in 2017 through mutual friends, but things started ramping up when they released their second album, 2022’s Fear & Dagger. Rapturously received by deathcore and beatdown aficionados, it was an upgrade on the fledgling violence of their early material – a mix of hardcore, deathcore and thrash that felt genuinely unhinged and unpredictable.
They followed it up earlier this year with Cursed, an even more dynamic album that ramps up the aggression and introduces a good dollop of nu metal into the mix, culminating in recent single River Of Sorrows – a grungey ballad with a blistering middle eight. It’s a volte face that shows the band’s ever-expanding range.
“I don’t really know why the deathcore name is so attached to the band’s name, because we never had the typical deathcore breakdowns and vocals,” shrugs Zelli.
There is, however, one clearly distinguishable influence in their sound. At its most potent, Cursed resembles Slipknot at their most depraved. The masked band got Zelli hooked on metal in his early teens, and he recently met drummer Eloy Casagrande and bassist Alex ‘Vman’ Venturella backstage at a festival.
“I was right next to Clown’s green room, and he was like, ‘Excuse me, can I enter my room?’” Zelli laughs. “I would never be brave enough to say, ‘What’s up?’”
Surely a support slot with Slipknot is on Paleface’s bucket list?
“We’re working on it!”
Zelli credits bands such as Slipknot and Mushroomhead with helping him channel and calm his teenage angst. “I’m not good at talking about emotions,” he admits. “I was walking through the streets of Switzerland listening to this really aggressive music, and I felt better. I’m not as angry as I could be because of the music. It took away all the anger that I had.”
Now he hopes Paleface’s music will have the same effect on others. The lyrics of their songs directly tackle mental health, depression and suicide, topics which are given short shrift in their home country.
“No one really talks about mental health in Switzerland,” he sighs. “It’s more about careers and making money.”
A lyric on one of Paleface’s heaviest tracks, Judgment Day, pours scorn on this fact: ‘The neutrality Switzerland is known for globally / Does not apply to Paleface / They came to destroy.’
“I don’t want to have the typical Swiss behaviour when it comes to mental health,” he says, explaining the lyric. “When I want to say something, I just say it straight.”
The horrific video for River Of Sorrows is perhaps the best example of their uncompromising approach to art, depicting a grief-stricken Zelli sitting in his bedroom next to a hanging body. He wrote the song about a break-up, but hopes the fans will relate to the imagery in their own way. “It doesn’t have to be my vision. If you see something else and it helps you, goal reached,” he says.
Their attitude is clear on 666, the intro on their 2023 album, Fear & Dagger, which contains a recording of a fan having a schizophrenic episode. The fan, who had been documenting their episodes in an effort to better understand their condition, asked if the band wanted to use it in one of their songs.
It’s a difficult, harrowing and deeply personal listen, its impact not too dissimilar to Korn’s 1994 track, Daddy, which saw vocalist Jonathan Davis screaming and crying in the vocal booth as he recalled abuse he experienced as a child at the hands of a babysitter.
“I wanted people to know that we didn’t want to just make money with it, but we wanted to open people’s eyes,” says Zelli, who explains that at first the band were unsure if it was the right thing to do. They decided the recording was an opportunity to spread awareness of the condition. “We tried to treat this topic with so much respect, and the response has been amazing.”
Zelli wants the Paleface Swiss community to be a safe space for fans. The track Enough?, from Cursed, is a direct challenge to the toxic masculinity that is rife within still male-orientated heavy scenes: ‘You are tall and you bang on your chest and you only listen to aggressive music / And I’m sitting here, and I’m singing about my own feelings…’
“I’m not a fan of really masculine behaviour. I’m from Switzerland, one of the most peaceful countries in the world.” He snorts. “I grew up being surrounded by cows.”
The band recently caused a stir when Zelli and drummer Cassi shared a mid-set kiss onstage. “You cannot believe how many tough guys walked out every single night,” he says. “That proves to me that I’m doing the right thing. We lose so many fans, but I don’t want them to be our supporters. Please just fuck off.”
That bloody-minded dedication to their morals and vision will only propel Paleface Swiss to greater heights. Although they work with the Nuclear Blast-affiliated Blood Blast to distribute their music, the band remain DIY and unsigned. From merch, to management and music videos, it’s a small, close-knit team of friends and extended family that run the show behind the scenes. “We want to keep it that way for as long as possible,” affirms Zelli.
Success at all costs, he says, is not the game plan. Despite their rise, Paleface know that slow and steady will ensure their longevity. “I want to reach the very top,” Zelli smiles. “But by having as much fun and making it as healthy as possible.”
Cursed: The Complete Edition is out now