Make Them Suffer discuss their self-titled album

In the green room beneath the stage at the Forum Theater in Melbourne, the energy is exhausted but still exhilarating. For Perth metalcore group Make Them Suffer, this special early September show marks the halfway point of their largely sold-out headline tour of Australia.

After an intensive European festival run, a successful North American tour and a lucrative gig supporting Bring Me the Horizon in early 2024, Make Them Suffer’s return to Australia in the second half of this year proved to be a triumphant victory lap.

But back to that green room.

After the show it’s sweaty; A weary smile spread across the band members’ faces as the adrenaline levels began to calm down after the full-throttle headline set that had been played just moments before.

It’s full of lively conversation, much of it concerned with the magnitude of the production itself, a gargantuan fusion of visuals, pyro and sound that puts Make Them Suffer in the same vein as bands like Alpha Wolf and Polaris when it comes to Australian heavy -Music is currently improving their vision and expanding their scope.

For Make Them Suffer, it’s the perfect opportunity to prepare for the release of their fifth studio album, a self-titled project that showcases the band at their most ambitious and definitive to date.

Now outside, Let them suffer is a collection of metalcore material prepared for global stages. The band had a big breakthrough with this project and the success of tracks like “Doomswitch” and “Oscillator”; to the unwavering nature of “Mana God,” “Epitaph,” and “Ghost of Me,” Let them suffer satisfying the desire to push yourself further than before.

Viewers who watched Make Them Suffer throughout 2024 will have gained plenty of insight into this new chapter for the band – led by frontman Sean Harmanis. Make Them Suffer shines as a creative unit with chemistry supported by Jaya Jeffery (bass). Nick McLernon (guitar), Jordan Mather (drums) and Alex Reade (keyboards, vocals).

The addition of Reade to the lineup in 2022 signaled a new direction for Make Them Suffer, a direction that the listener hears blossoming with new intensity on their new album.

“There were a few different iterations of Make Them Suffer,” Harmanis tells us Rolling Stone AU/NZ Days after returning from China, where they played at the 2024 Eastsea Metal Festival.

“Over the years we have also experimented a lot with different sounds. I think all the pieces felt like they were put together and aligned for this album. Everyone felt that too. This is by far our best work to date. We are all very proud of it.”

Five albums later, Make Them Suffer clearly know their way around a recording studio; They know what kind of energy their music expresses. However, with the new lineup and new ideas beginning to permeate their creative process, it became clear that something was changing in the writing dynamic of this album.

As Harmanis recalls, things crystallized for him while writing the album title “Weaponized.” The last lyric of the track is fittingly “make them suffer” – a moment during writing that clicked for the songwriter.

After being on this journey with his bandmates for so many years and going through many sonic changes, this was a validating moment for Harmanis. The direction Make Them Suffer should go with this new music was clear.

“The last lyrics to the (second) track of the album just make sense,” he says. “At that point we all felt like something really special was happening in the studio. We were all very high on the track!”

“The energy of the band in general; Everyone was just excited to be a part of Make Them Suffer, excited about the things that were happening for the band, in terms of our career and how everything was going. When we decided to self-title the album, we thought, ‘Yeah, this album is going to be sick.'”

However, the trajectory was almost completely stunted. In 2023, Make Them Suffer released a remastered version of their debut album, Never bloom, for the tenth anniversary, but there hasn’t been a new album since 2020 How to Survive a Funeral.

Harmanis admits there was a time before Doomswitch’s release in 2022 when the band considered quitting altogether, and reflects on what drove Make Them Suffer to persevere and strive for satisfaction .

“When we saw that people were still excited about the band and people were still listening from 2010 and 2012, we thought, “Okay, this is it.” We have to strike while the iron is hot and everything give.

“We’ve honed our craft over the course of 15 years and our songwriting has really improved. We are in a really fortunate situation now; everyone is really excited about it. This has been distilled into the songs on this album.”

For those new to Make Them Suffer, Harmanis grins at the thought of new fans associating this self-titled effort with their first exposure to the band. From his perspective, it’s a smart move.

“That’s another reason why we were very happy to have given this film its own title,” he says. “When someone listens to a band for the first time, they might listen to the self-titled band first. For us this is a great entry album to Make Them Suffer. These songs are the coolest for a first time listener of the band. You will understand what we are about.”

Make Them Suffer’s self-titled fifth album is out now.