23. February 2025
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Media Review

Paleface – Fear & Dagger

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

Paleface - Fear & Dagger

Paleface - Fear & Dagger
4.6

Rating

 4.6/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Very versatile and entertaining album
  • Very skillful recordings
  • 16 tracks / 67 minutes

Paleface is naming themselves to be the best beatdown band of their home country, Switzerland. With Fear & Dagger, the band is already releasing their second album, despite a rather short band history. It has been released on 25th March 2022.

 

Paleface – About The Artists

Paleface has been founded in Zurich in 2017. The beatdown band has initially been founded by Marc Zellweger (vocals) and Colin Hammond (drums). named Zelli and CJ. Nowadays, the band is a quartet, as the duo added Tommy-Lee Abt (bass) and guitarist Yannick Lehmann. In 2018, the band released a six-track EP, Chapter 1: From The Gallows. Exactly one year later, Chapter 2: Witch King has been the band’s second EP. Chapter 3: The Last Selection is their debut album. It has been released on 30th October 2020.

 

Paleface – Fear & Dagger – Track by Track

The 16 track album lasts 67 minutes.

1. 666

A good dark album needs good dark sounds at the beginning: a lot of screaming and crying in this almost two minutes narrative intro. Feels painful for the protagonist, but promising for the listener.

2. Pain

Painful is the right linking – Pain is the titke of the first full track (which is just 2:10 minutes as well). We are pain, we are God is the main sentence in this track, which is still at rather moderate metal-ness. Rather a second, accelerated warm-up for the tracks which lie ahead of the listener.

3. Suppressing Times

While the instruments have not been working at full power yet, Paleface are steadily increasing the energy and show the first nicely marching headbanger with Suppressing Times. Nice work on the vocal side with rather clear lyrics, which sometimes have a feeling of a very dark hip hop sound. Cool sound.

4. Make A Deal With The Devil

Not only on the melodic side, Paleface are about to rise the level of the album. The title of the fourth track, Make A Deal With The Devil, is also promising hard lyrics. The first track at an acceptable metal duration (4:45 minutes) nicely works with rhythmic changes, but also forceful marching parts. Drummer CJ is also warmed up now and need to go for the machine gun type of using his rhythm machine.

5. Deathtouch

Deathtouch has been one of the three single releases by Paleface before the album publication. The song feels like a typical Paleface track and is thus definitely a wise selection. The later, the greater – Deathtouch reaches its climax at the end definitely.

6. Nail To The Tooth

Marc Zellweger is doing an impressive job shouting and partially almost rapping the lyrics of Nail To The Tooth into the microphone. Thus, he is definitely the most catching element of the song. I can’t state a certain level of fascination here.

7. Dead Man’s Diary (feat. LANDMVRKS)

The Dead Man’s Diary is another single release. The Swiss receive support from France, where their guest musicians Landmvrks are coming from. Nice collaboration, which gives a lot potential to duets and duels and other interaction. Thus, the song is definitely one of the best of the album.

8. God Looks The Other Way

The later part of the album hosts a couple of longer tracks. The first one is God Looks The Other Way, which is the first one on the album exceeding a six minute duration. Powerful riffs, howling guitars, but also dramatic story-telling sections with a slightly reduced instrumental presence – the Swiss know to make use of that time.

9. Chaos Theory (feat. Traitors)

The US-American deathcore band Traitors has a rather limited presence on the album. Chaos Theory, which hosts their guest appearance, just lasts less than three minutes. Nice thing that the Traitors “announce” Paleface on their very won album.

10. The Orphan

At the beginning of the single release The Orphan, Zelli is again demonstrating some really fast vocal performance. After this has been done, the song develops more and more to a core one of the album. Some very grooving parts, but on the other hand, Paleface also show strong instrumental performances with a range of sounds you would not expect at this band setup. The f-word is a bit too frequently used in my point of view.

11. My Grave / Lay With Me

This song feels to start with some sort of prayer, but it becomes more and more angry and gradually becomes a hip hop song, before the guitars finally join in. Very melodic main theme on the instrumental side, before the song turns into a melodic farewell. Most interesting transition of the album so far, for sure.

12. Hellhole (feat. Justice For The Damned)

Feat & Dagger is truly an intercontinental collaboration. Justice For The Damned, who join Paleface on Hellhole, are a New South Wales, Australia, band. The result is a good four minute track, which is maybe slighly lacking catching signature elements.

13. No Room Left In Hell

There’s no room, there is no room left in hell – the thirteenth song is having a lot of sing-a-long potential. Great work on the instrumental side again. Not the deepest song, but a nice metal stomper, which is having a lot of potential to be fun.

14. Bite The Curb

Bite The Curb is another rather short episode of the album. Nonetheless, the some two and a half minutes are entertaining and even have some nice variety moments.

15. Fear & Dagger

Almost on the final straight, there is the title track of Paleface’s second album. The guys are going for a high performance here. Nice listen with powerful melodies.

16. Judgement Day

And and the end of each painful process, there is Judgement Day. Going for the final verdict needs another almost seven minutes. One of the most atmospheric tracks of the album. Good listen, even though there are sometimes too many sounds in parallel.

 

Paleface – Fear & Dagger – Spotify

Here is Feat & Dagger on Spotify:

 

Paleface – Fear & Dagger – My View

They are on the throne of their genre in their country – and if any competitor agrees on that status, Fear & Dagger will not change it. The album is metalcore noise at a very fine level. On top of that, the album is rather long without being boring. Great listen!

 

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