Band: Curselifter
From: Utrecht, Netherlands
Their formation story:
(Rosa, vocals): “How we started out is always a bit of a funny story. I did guest vocals for Dying Wish in Eindhoven during Enemies in Red, and our now drummer Laurens came up to me to ask what band I was in myself. When I told him I wasn't, he said he could not accept that answer but he had a solution: we’d just have to start a band together. We exchanged contact info, got to talking and ended up starting Curselifter.”
(Robin, guitar): “I have been making music with Laurens for a very long time and one day, a while after our previous band had quit, we were on the phone talking about wanting to start something up again. Laurens told me he just met a sick singer who did guest vocals at a Dying Wish show, which was Rosa.
"We immediately started writing, met up with Rosa and then ‘officially’ started the band. We put out a demo and Tias, a friend and guitarist from the city Laurens and I grew up in, joined on bass. Everything just clicked really well and we felt like a good team from the start, which I am still very grateful for.”
Their sound in their own words:
(Robin): “I think 'metallic hardcore' covers our style pretty well. We like low-tuned heavy riffs and dissonant chords, and aim for a tight and aggressive sound that is still a little raw. But in the end it is a blend of all of our personal tastes and what everyone brings to the table.
"We all share a love for contemporary hardcore bands like Mortality Rate, Knocked Loose, and Year of the Knife. Each of us has their personal preference like being more into punk or into 2000s metalcore, and those influences also find their way into the songs.”
Latest release info:
(Rosa): “Our newest EP, Banishment, came out on June 2nd. The title track features Yarí, who does vocals in Snake Eater. We had some of these tracks written and it felt like the right moment to release them right before doing a weekender in Brussels, Amsterdam, Urmond and Stuttgart.
"Lyrically, our music revolves around themes of sexual violence, police brutality, machismo, and other forms of discrimination. The second song on the EP, 'False Comfort,' is a product of the frustration we feel nowadays seeing people who turn a blind eye to the genocide happening in Palestine for example, and refusing to take action under the guise of being ‘uninformed’ or not knowing how to help.”
(Robin): “We were working on new songs pretty quickly after our LP from 2024, but we didn’t feel like making another full-length album just yet. So we decided to choose the best couple of songs to release and those became the EP. We have a lot of shows coming up in the summer and fall, so it felt nice to hit the road in June with some new material.
"We take the writing process really seriously and always try to improve our songwriting and the way we work together, which isn’t always easy. Some songs took a couple of weeks to finish, but others came together really spontaneously in one afternoon. Other than that, we did the whole production ourselves (except the mastering, shout out Daniel Wullems), which was a cool experience and we learned a lot from that.”
Future plans:
(Rosa): “Our plans for the near future basically consist of playing a lot of shows. For now it's mostly in the Netherlands and Germany, but we hope to be able to hit more places in Europe and the UK too. We’ve been talking about another release soon as our drummer Laurens and guitarist Robin are almost constantly writing new songs, but don't have specific plans yet.”
What other bands from their region should we check out?
(Rosa): “A few bands we love and want to shout out are Spear, Provisional, Snake Eater, Tigerknife, Swell, Karnabahar, and Ontaard.”
Curselifter on social media: Instagram
Tagged: curselifter
