Make Them Suffer
Make The Suffer
Sharptone Records
I feel like this band has certainly lived up to its name with the long build-up to this album. The twitching death bomb ‘Doomswitch’ got us really excited in 2022. Then, in 2023, the full twin vocal contrast of Alex Reade and Sean Hermanis was first heard on ‘Ghost Of You’. In 2024, there was proper activity. The tracks started coming in faster-paced ‘Epitaph’, followed by the utterly crushing ‘Oscillator’ and the brutal ‘Mana God’.
Now the album is finally here, and I’ve just mentioned half of it, as all of those tracks are present and now considered, rightly so, scene classics. So, how about the other half of this album? Fans will be very happy to hear the standard of the remaining tracks is truly the unique brand of Death/Metalcore that has pushed this band onto the bigger stages.
The standard setting ‘Weaponized‘ is the first proper song, clearly stating where this band is heading. On ‘No Hard Feelings’, Alex takes the lead, and it’s here that we realise what the band’s ace card is. Many metalcore acts lose pace when doing the harsh to clean vocal dynamic, but the music loses no momentum because there’s a male/female trade-off at play. ‘Venusian Blues’ is a surprising shift into dreamy open guitar passages and a punky delivery. When the album ends on the towering ‘Small Town Syndrome’, it feels like you can almost chart the band’s two-year-plus progress through the songs. The newer-sounding songs seem far more ambitious, showcasing the band’s growth and progression, and that can only be a great thing.
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Reviewed By George Miller