Weekly Update #35 – January 5, 2025

FEATURED ALBUM
Paleface Swiss // Cursed
Released: January 3, 2025

What a huge miss. Other bands must be thanking Paleface Swiss for setting the bar so low. 2025 can only get better from here.

To be honest, I didn’t get the hype when ‘Fear & Dagger’ came out in 2022 because it was an hour and six minutes long and every song sounded the same. Well it turns out that when they try to branch out and do something new (like incorporate rap or focus on an emotion other than anger), those songs suck even more.

We get it bro, you can scream fast. But there’s no style. No flair. Not like Attila (when they were good), Hunt The Dinosaur, or The Holy Guile. And if you want the same vocals barked at you over and over again, 156/Silence is significantly better. Paleface’s best attempt is probably on “Hatred” because it’s a rip off of Slipknot. 

I just can’t take these guys seriously. Everything sounds so corny and forced. And Zelli’s cringe Joker laugh on every other song isn’t helping. They’re the definition of a performative band. Them and Slaughter To Prevail are the kings of making music for tough guys who think they listen to heavy shit.

The sad part is that Paleface started off as a pretty cool deathcore/slam hybrid and made some legitimately heavy songs. But now they’re on the same path that metalcore bands follow when becoming octane-core buttrock. Paleface started in a heavier place so it’s gonna take them longer to reach the destination, but make no mistake, they’re on their way.

The rap parts are especially rough because the whole “English as a second language” aspect is impossible to ignore. I’m genuinely shocked that “Enough?” was greenlit for the album. It’s supposed to be rap but it doesn’t rhyme. At all. So you basically have a two minute monologue of Zelli whining about the “toxic masculinity” in their fanbase.

My brother in Christ, you are the one that created a slam/deathcore band. You even use all the standards of the genre – gore, women being tortured on album covers, focusing on hate and anger – what kind of listeners did you think you were going to attract with that kind of music? Your last album and your band’s entire marketing scheme tries to appeal to macho, alpha, tough guys. Remember? That’s your whole gimmick – for the last six years you’ve made music for guys who think they listen to heavy shit. Now you want to whine and sing and share your deep emotions, but that’s not what anybody listens to Paleface for, so now you’re mad at your fans because they don’t like this new nonsense that you’re forcing on them. Great. Totally your fans’ fault.

Also, it should be illegal to release a 28-minute album that only has 9 songs, especially when three of them were singles we have already heard AND there’s an intro. So thanks for the 5 songs, I guess.

Now that I’ve spent two hours listening to this trash, I need to move onto something else. The fact that my Spotify wrapped would say this is my most listened to band of the year right now is killing me.

Playlist of New Songs

Quick playlist highlights:

– Shrine of Malice is back! This is a very solid return from an extremely exciting deathcore band. Their 2018 and 2019 albums are still some of the best deathcore in recent history. It was unfortunate that they got derailed by some life events, but if they release an album/EP this year, there is a very high chance that it will be in my top 10.

– August Burns Red is releasing a re-recorded version of ‘Thrill Seeker’ on January 24 to celebrate its 20 year anniversary. I’ve dreamed of hearing Jake do vocals on these songs for so long and it’s about to become a reality. I know that re-recorded albums shouldn’t be in my top 10, but ‘Thrill Seeker’ is legitimately better than 99% of metalcore albums that are going to be released this year.

– I haven’t listened to Capsize much, but this song is telling me that I need to give them another chance. Are they always this heavy? Maybe I missed the memo, but this is great.

– The Crimson Armada continues to pump out bangers. What a massive return. 2025 is looking good for deathcore.

– Attila is giving me whiplash. They do one good song and then a couple bad ones. This one is fine (as far as Attila goes), but it just seems like they’re lost when it comes to building a cohesive sound.

– Impending Doom is getting ready to release a new album on February 7. Honestly, these guys have become a pretty good gateway band to deathcore (which is wild considering the sound the started with on ‘Nailed. Dead. Risen’). I’m actually hearing some similarities to Fit For A King here. I’d say Impending Doom is miles better than the current version of Fit For A King, and if they can pull some FFAK fans over, that would be huge for them.

– Imminence just released a remastered version of their debut album, and it’s really good. Dang, I wish they had stuck with this style instead of going with the flowery violin stuff in all of their newer material. It was cool the first couple times but got old pretty fast for me.

Newsletter Recipients’ Album of the Year

Thank you to everyone who voted on their album of the year! I received 14 submissions and have tallied the results (see below).

How it worked: For each submission, I assigned the number one choice 100 points, the number two choice 99 points, the number three choice 98 points, etc. I then combined each band’s points to see who accumulated the most. If two bands received the same number of points, I broke the tie by using the highest number of points received from a single submission (e.g., Thrown and Erra both received 378 points, but Thrown’s highest single vote was 99 and Erra’s highest single vote was 98, so Thrown beat Erra).

Fun Facts: Your 14 submissions included 81 different bands. (To save myself time and space though, I only included bands on the list below if they were on two or more submissions).

Knocked Loose was easily the top favorite. Interestingly, only two people said Knocked Loose was their number one album of the year, but they appeared in 12 of the 14 submissions, which is how they accumulated so many points.

Boundaries and Bring Me The Horizon also had two people each say that they had the best album of the year, but they only appeared in 7 of the 14 submissions.

Compared to my album of the year list, Erra is the biggest outlier. You guys really seemed to like that one – I had it ranked a lot lower.

Other than that, this list has 8 of the same top 10 as my list! If Synestia / Disembodied Tyrant had moved two places up we would have had 9 out of 10 the same. But it turns out that you guys didn’t like the Windwaker album nearly as much as I did. (It was number 5 on my list and would have been number 76 on your list if I went that far).

Thank you to everyone for your submissions! It was fun seeing your entries and compiling the results. I’ll try to include more polls like this in the future.

1. Knocked Loose – 1148 points
2. Boundaries – 679
3. Bring Me The Horizon – 677
4. 156/Silence – 476
5. Like Moths to Flames – 380
6. Thrown – 378
7. Erra – 378
8. See You Space Cowboy – 373
9. Eidola – 368
10. Galleons – 295
11. Allt – 292
12. Synestia / Disembodied Tyrant – 290
13. Make Them Suffer – 288
14. Bilmuri – 288
15. Gravemind – 284
16. Falling in Reverse – 281
17. Counterparts – 279
18. Cane Hill – 197
19. Fit For An Autopsy – 196
20. Kublai Khan – 196
21. The Home Team – 194
22. Being As An Ocean – 194
23. Alpha Wolf – 192
24. The Plot in You – 192
25. Her Last Sight – 190
26. In Hearts Wake – 189
27. Darko – 189
28. Poppy – 187
29. Kingdom of Giants – 180
30. While She Sleeps – 175