HARD NOISE: MAKE THEM SUFFER // A New World Suffers

Deathcore only gets you so far today. Unless you’re as dedicated to its cause as the Thy Art Is Murders of the world, there’s a heaped pile of groups that have abandoned it in favour of forging their own path. Make Them Suffer fall firmly in the latter category; their second release Old Souls saw a shift from blast beats to anthemic choruses. The breakdowns were still there, just with a little more substance than before.

Sitting with the band in the Warner Music office in Melbourne, they’re riding high after their show with The Amity Affliction. There’s laughter when Hysteria mention they haven’t exactly made it easy for those not used to their heavy material. After all, they open the set with crushing favourite Widower that may shock those who’ve never heard anything more brutal than Amity’s Death’s Hand. “Obviously we’re opening so a lot of the time people are still turning up during the set but it’s nothing unfamiliar for us,” says vocalist Sean Harmanis. Guitarist Nick McLernon continues, “The crowd has been great. I thoroughly enjoy being the heavy band on the bill and melting people’s faces. Particularly The Amity Affliction and PVRIS fans.” Recent addition to the group, bassist Jaya Jeffery delves further saying, “It’s a song that everyone knows, it’s heavy and gets the crowd going. Especially when everyone’s lined up for a long time, people are ready to jump up and hit someone in the face. Straight to the point! It’s great being able to throw stuff from Neverbloom into the mix. It pleases the older fans but it’s also cool being able to play that heavier music to fans that probably may have never heard of anything like it.”

With the significant line-up alteration officially announced last month, listeners may not be familiar with the new blood that have joined the group. Jeffrey says of his connection to the band, “I’ve known Nick and Sean for a long time now. From the end of high school we were playing in bands together and we know each other from the music scene. W.A.’s a small place and everyone knows everyone; a small little family. Both Sean and Nick hit me up last year at the beginning to play a few shows with them and now I’m stuck with them. In a good way!” McLernon cracks, “Like a bandaid we couldn’t peel off …” as the rest erupt in laughter. Keyboardist/vocals Booka Nile has an easier job introducing herself now after Jeffery has taken the hard first step. “I met Nick back when I was about 21 (many eons ago) and we were working together doing some weird filing work and we met, hung out and I met the whole crew. I became really good friends with them and we were hanging out last year and Nick mentioned there were some lineup changes going on and I said ‘well I play piano’. Suddenly we were talking about the tour’s coming up, and I went on the European tour with the guys and recorded the album. It all happened really fast, and now I’m sitting here. It was my first time ever playing music in front of human beings. Yeah, first time playing music not in front of my cats in my bedroom,” she laughs.

It all happened really fast, and now I’m sitting here. It was my first time ever playing music in front of human beings. Yeah, first time playing music not in front of my cats in my bedroom.
[ Booka Nile ]

Booka Nile, Make Them Suffer // Photo Daniel Anderson

McLernon sits back and thinks a moment before saying, “It’s pretty crazy. This whole thing with Booka being in the band is really, really fucking crazy. It’s like Booka’s perk in life is just like weird, unforeseen shit happening to her. She manages to find herself in places that you never expect her to be. Booka being in Make Them Suffer is wicked, because she’s one of our old friends. Same thing with Jaya, like both old friends of ours who have a history with the band even before they were in it. With Booka, it was like she had heard about the shifts in our line-up that were occurring at the time, and she just went, ‘You know what, I’m gonna give it a shot.’ She has pride to this. She had no previous knowledge as to what to do on stage. This is all very new to her. We’re throwing her straight into the deep end; her first show with us was on a month long tour in Europe.”

Booka being in Make Them Suffer is wicked, because she’s one of our old friends. Same thing with Jaya, like both old friends of ours who have a history with the band even before they were in it.
[ Nick McLernon ]

On that note, it’s fair that fans may see the lighter sonic choices on Worlds Apart as a direct result of the fresh faces in the group. Even though Old Souls saw the band move away from eight minute deathcore epics, Worlds Apart sees the band experiment and change more than original fans may have liked. Asked if it had any impact on the writing process, Harmanis says, “I don’t think the line-up changes have really changed the direction that we’ve been going in.  We wrote Ether previous to the lineup changes and after that, Worlds Apart just seemed like a more natural progression. I don’t know if the line-up changes necessarily changed the outcome of the album; it was just something that came very naturally to us. It felt like the right direction … Yeah, maybe unknowingly by having Jaya and Booka in the band particularly … Maybe it was their vibe that kind of subconsciously made us write the music we’re writing. It’s just a thing that happens in bands. Nothing has to be said. As much as we would like to say, “Look this was all gonna happen anyway.” Maybe, unbeknownst to us, by having them in the band the chemistry changes in that way, and it influences us to write what we’re writing now.”

Maybe it was their vibe that kind of subconsciously made us write the music we’re writing. It’s just a thing that happens in bands. Nothing has to be said.
[ Sean Harmanis ]

Leaning forward as the vocalist finishes; McLernon picks up on his final sentence with a slight frown. “I don’t like using the word direction,” he says. “By saying ‘direction’, you’re essentially saying there’s an implication that we’re trying to ‘achieve’ a type of sound. I don’t think we’re trying to achieve any sound. We’re simply artists who want to express themselves musically. We’re not writing music for anyone or anything, it’s just what comes out. The difference between this album, Neverbloom and Old Souls is that Neverbloom and Old Souls have the Lord of Woe theme going on. It’s just a facet of Make Them Suffer. It’s not going in any particular direction, we’re just trying out a few new things and that’s all there is to that …”

Sean Harmanis, Make Them Suffer // Photo Daniel Anderson

The guitarist picks up the trail again when asked whether the pressure from older fans had influenced their thoughts going into Worlds Apart. “For us, I think to write the same record over and over again is just cheating your fans. Not only that, and from the person who’s writing the music from their perspective … It’s like how can you as an artist write the same thing over and over again? That just doesn’t line up with our artistic philosophy. You’ve got to try something different every time. Otherwise, you’re kind of just cheating your fans; cheating yourself.” Harmanis follows on, “And for every fan that’s like, ‘Oh, you guys suck now. You’ve gone all soft. Bring back the Neverbloom sound.’ There’s also someone who maybe is not so into that music that’s like, “Man, it’s been fantastic watching your band grow and progress, and I’m really excited about the new direction that you’ve taken.”

For us, I think to write the same record over and over again is just cheating your fans.
[ Nick McLernon ]

One of the main reasons fans have stuck with the group is their dedication to weaving a grandiose storyline throughout each of their projects. From their debut EP Lord of Woe, Neverbloom to Old Souls, they each add to the world that Harmanis has created from his own experiences. Take Old Souls; the majority of listeners may not have realised the record’s narrative is reversed, actually ending with the record’s opener Foreword. Fan theories abound, and the singer winks as we ask if there are any secrets hidden in their new record.  “We definitely wanted to keep the lyrical content relatively conceptually based. There is definitely a storyline. It’s a little bit more cryptic in this one, and I tried really hard to make the lyrics extremely relatable and catchy. So if you carry a concept across whilst maintaining that catchiness is a pretty difficult thing. I think it’s been achieved though. There’s definitely a storyline in there and you can find that by doing a bit of digging into some of the more ambient parts of the CD and see what you come up with … It’s definitely the most far-fetched and weird storyline that I’ve ever done.”

It may be more out there than their previous content, but the band haven’t exactly pulled a Bring Me The Horizon or Linkin Park on their fans. There’s still more than enough low growls and tones to keep the old heads happy. Still though, there’s hardly a more metal phrase than “I liked their old stuff.” Harmanis says of his writing style, “Nick gets quite cranky with me actually, because I’m already talking to him about ideas for the new album and stuff like that, and he’s like, “It’s too early. I haven’t even started writing yet.” These are ideas that I just kind of have for many years, and then when the first bits of music are being written I can kind of scope out what the sound of that particular album might be and start writing accordingly.” Elaborating further on their fanbase, the singer says, “I think our real fans can think for themselves. It’s hard to define who our fans are. There are people who are fans of Make Them Suffer but only like Neverbloom or maybe just Old Souls. I don’t call them fans of Make Them Suffer. I just call them fans of that particular album by Make Them Suffer.” McLernon wholeheartedly agrees. “I think our real fans can see what’s going on. They can think for themselves, and they can go like, ‘Yep,’ exactly like Sean said, ‘I love the evolution of this band. I love what’s going on’.”

Jaya Jeffery, Make Them Suffer // Photo Daniel Anderson

The Plague: It’s a long one, but Make Them Suffer won’t ever be forgotten in Europe after a particularly nasty rotavirus plague.

Jaya: We were on this tour called Never Say Die in Europe. It’s like a tour festival that happens in Europe annually, and we were one of the younger bands on that bill. That was our first bus tour. We didn’t really know how to go about going on bus tours, so when we wrapped up we were introduced to things like, “Okay, this is what you do to get into the bus. This is where the toilet is etc.” Well, I got the memo not to drink the bus water. Do not drink the bus water. I don’t know. I don’t think that the rest of our band got it.

Nick: I was told very clearly by Patrick who was the stage manager of the tour that you can, yeah. I was told very clearly that, “Yes, you can drink the tap water that sits next to the coffee machine. You cannot drink the tap water that is in the actual bathroom itself.” So myself and our fill-in keyboardist for the tour had been going ham on this bus water that was just soaking in the walls …

Sean: And like you forgot to bring one of your bottled waters into your bunk with you and you’re dehydrated because you’re travelling and all that sort of stuff. I get up and drink the bus water, and about four or five shows into the tour … it came. It was like in the backstage area, and I was feeling so sick, and there was like one bathroom that was being used by seven bands, and I just like ran in there and yacked all in the sink, and people were like walking in and out past me and going to pee, but it was just so obvious like, “The singer from Make Them Suffer is sick.”

Then by that point everyone started saying, “Sean got everyone sick,” because I did. One by one, systematically almost two people per day would get this plague that would last for like two or three days of nonstop diarrhoea and vomiting. We called it the ‘Fuck You Virus’, because it would go in … yeah. When we went on tour with Stray [From The Path] and Architects, first thing that was said from Architects was, “Oh, Make Them Suffer. You been shitting in my water?” And we were like, “What are you talking about?” It was like, “Oh, little birdies told me that you got everyone sick on the Never Say Die tour.” Oh, here we go then. We had to clear it up. We were talking with Ben from Whitechapel. He was like, “Stay away from me. Wash your hands.” No one’s ever going to forget about that.

Nick McLernon, Make Them Suffer // by Daniel Anderson

An American (and Australian in Paris): Chelsea Grin, Make Them Suffer and a night of drinking. What could go so wrong that Alex and Nick ended up as hitchhikers?

Nick: We got so trollied one night. So the bus stopped, and for whatever reason Alex [Koehler, vocalist for Chelsea Grin] and I stepped out of the bus. We were both up all night. It was just us two. So the buses when they stop, they’re supposed to stop for 30 minutes at a time to refuel, to resupply, to do whatever they need to do. So we went into the complex, which for what we thought was five minutes. We came back out and took one step outside and were like, “Where the fuck is the bus?” This is in the middle of France on the way to Paris, and so Alex was freaking out being like, ‘Shit. Shit, man. This is so bad.’ Like demon dialling Jay our tour manager. Everyone’s asleep at 6am, so Jay’s not answering. So apparently … I don’t remember this but our eyes were like red, man. We looked fucked up and Alex is head to toe covered in tattoos.

He told me I apparently went up to some random dude and went like, “Hey, where are you going?” And this guy is like, “Uh Paris?” But he was just some random dude from the Netherlands. So I said, “Take me there,” and he said, “Okay.” So Alex and I hitchhiked with this dude and his girlfriend from the middle of France to Paris, which he happened to be going to the same place. We eventually ended up rocking up before the bus even got there. 20 minutes later the bus came, and everyone was stepping off the bus [so confused] … the bus driver couldn’t believe his eyes!

Booka: [laughs] The best part about this was the night before. Alex was actually telling me a story about how this had happened to a guy that he was on tour with like the year before or something about, “It’s crazy. He got left behind. Can you even imagine?”//

iTunes > Worlds Apart is out July 28