Interview STERCORE

STERCORE discuss their evolving sound, international touring, creative collaborations, and the ideas behind “VOID,” reflecting on their journey and the desire to push beyond deathcore’s boundaries.

1. “For Death We Wait” marked a darker and more complex chapter for STERCORE, while your latest track “VOID” continues that evolution. What has changed most in the way you approach songwriting and creating music compared with your earlier material?

The biggest change is that we started working with István again. We also started leaving songs alone for a while after writing them. We can come back to them later and hear them differently.

That’s been very liberating compared to how we worked before. We don’t feel like we have to release something just because we wrote it. We can be selective and put out only what we genuinely enjoy and stand behind 110%.

With “VOID”, that became especially important. It feels like a step away from simply building on what we’ve already done. We’re not trying to abandon where STERCORE came from, but we also don’t want to be trapped by it. The deathcore foundation is still there, but we’re starting to blur the edges around it and see where we can take the band next.

2. STERCORE combines metal, hardcore and modern electronic elements without being easily confined to one genre. When you start writing a new song, do you think about genre at all, or is the priority simply to create something that feels powerful and authentic to the band?

Genre has never really come up in our conversations. We all listen to different kinds of music, so when we write, all of those things naturally come together.

The fact that it ends up being metal is just the most authentic way for us to express what we would want to listen to ourselves.

With “VOID”, I think you can hear that we’re becoming less interested in protecting the borders of what STERCORE is supposed to be. We have a deathcore background, obviously, and we’re not hiding from that. It’s part of the band.

But it doesn’t have to be the final destination.

We want to evolve. If something fits the song and makes it hit harder emotionally, we’ll use it. It doesn’t matter whether someone wants to call it metal, hardcore, deathcore, electronic or something else.

3. “VOID” has a particularly massive and contemporary sound, with contributions from Jeff Dunne and Simone Pietroforte. What did these collaborations bring to the production, and how did working with people who understand the modern heavy-music sound influence the final result?

Jeff and Simone worked with us on older material. “VOID” was handled by István.

What those collaborations gave us was motivation to keep improving at what we had already started. Developing our own sound and our own approach.

That’s probably one of the biggest things we’ve taken from working with people around us. You realize there’s always something you can improve. You can learn something from every person you work with, and we’re definitely learning faster now than we ever have before.

“VOID” is part of that process. It’s not supposed to sound like a finished version of STERCORE. It’s supposed to show where we’re moving.

4. The EP also features Tom Barber on “DISGUST.” How did that collaboration come together, and what was it like hearing his distinctive vocal style added to a STERCORE track?

We met Chelsea Grin at FajtFest in the Czech Republic over dinner and started talking with Tom. At the time, we already had “DISGUST” in progress.

We played it for him and asked if there was a possibility of doing a feature. He gave us his email and the rest is history.

It was pretty straightforward. We had a song, we liked what Tom does, so we asked.

5. Your live shows are described as chaotic, intense and built around crushing breakdowns and huge crowd energy. What do you want people to experience when they leave a STERCORE show that they simply cannot get from listening to the records at home?

We want people to get everything out of themselves. Positive emotions, negative emotions, anger, whatever they have inside.

From the beginning of the set until the end, we want people to stop thinking about normal life. No everyday problems, no work, no bullshit. Just being there, right now, with STERCORE.

The record can give you the music, but a show gives you the physical experience of it. That’s where the aggression and energy really become something different.

6. You have shared stages with bands such as Thy Art Is Murder, Crystal Lake, Bad Omens, Fit For An Autopsy and Soulfly, as well as appearing at major festivals. Is there a particular show, festival or crowd that has left a lasting impression on the band, and why?

Germany, because we felt how music can cross generations. We let a young kid come up and sing with us, and it would be really cool if we could somehow be a catalyst for him becoming a rockstar in the future.

It would be cool to know that we became part of his band story somehow.

7. In March 2026, STERCORE took part in the Japanese leg of The Discovery World Tour alongside Born Of Osiris and Signs of the Swarm, performing in Osaka and Tokyo. What surprised you most about playing for Japanese audiences, and how did the experience compare with touring Europe?

How much they look after each other while still being completely insane.

They have a huge passion for metal and music in general. At the same time, there’s a lot of genuine kindness and gratitude for the fact that we were even there playing for them.

That combination was probably the biggest thing we noticed. They can go absolutely fucking crazy, but there’s still a lot of respect between people.

8. Coming from Slovakia, you have built an increasingly international presence through European touring, festivals and now Asia. How important has it been for STERCORE to take the music outside your home country, and what have you learned from connecting with audiences around the world?

In Slovakia, we don’t really have a scene. And even the little that exists is full of gatekeepers and an old stigma that never seems to disappear.

So if we wanted to present what we wanted people to hear, we had to start abroad.

That also forced us to grow. When you take the band outside your own country, you’re constantly exposed to new people, new bands, new approaches and new ways of doing things.

We’re learning from that all the time. And I think that’s important for STERCORE now. We don’t want to stay in the same place just because something worked before.

9. Visual identity is clearly an important part of the STERCORE experience, with Marcus Oliver Obert handling visuals, art direction and PR. How do you approach the relationship between your music, artwork, videos and live visuals when creating the band's overall identity?

Marcus tries to say visually what we’re trying to say through the music. That’s really the simplest way to describe it. With his experiences in fine art we immediately said yes.

The music is obviously the centre, but the band is much bigger than just the songs. There’s artwork, videos, visuals, PR, management and a lot of things happening behind the scenes.

That’s why this teamwork is so important. Everyone has their own part, and you need people who understand the direction and can take it further in their own field. You simply need people who „gets it“.

We’re trying to build one identity instead of having the music say one thing and everything around it say something completely different.

10. Looking ahead, STERCORE seems to be entering an exciting new phase. What can listeners expect next from the band, and where do you personally want to take the STERCORE sound from here?

I think the important thing about a “new phase” is that it should actually mean something.

For us, it’s not just about making heavier songs or changing the production. It’s about moving forward as people and as a band.

We want the writing to become more personal. More personal lyrics, more of our own experiences, and music that actually means something to us.

And musically, “VOID” is a good indication of where our heads are. The deathcore foundation is still part of STERCORE, but we’re blurring it. We’re interested in what happens when you take that foundation and push it somewhere else.

We don’t want to keep making the same STERCORE record with a different cover.

We want to keep learning, keep experimenting and keep finding things we haven’t done before. There’s still a lot we don’t know, and honestly, that’s what makes it exciting.

The goal is simple: make music that we genuinely enjoy and would listen to ourselves. If that means moving further away from what people expect STERCORE to sound like, then that’s where we’ll go.

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