Originally Posted by Aborted
Subrick (Youtube commentator) sums it up in depth:
So yeah, this band released a new song. Having reviewed their debut record Neverbloom nearly a year ago, I've made it no secret that I did not really care for Make Them Suffer or their brand of symphonic deathcore. There were moments on that album that felt like a band wanting to create music beyond the parameters of your typical generic breakdown band, but at the same time so much of that record adhered to those genre prerequisites that it made for one intensely uninteresting album. Now nearly 10 months later, Make Them Suffer have affirmed their desire to suck with great force by creating and releasing the single "Let Me In", a testament to the pitfalls of writing songs based around breakdowns and how it almost never works.
Of the only two styles of songs Make Them Suffer knows how to write (those being ultra "brutal" breakdown tunes drenched in tough guy hardcore stupidity and slightly less idiotic, longer, black metal influenced blastfests), "Let Me In" is the former style in spades. Aside from one all too brief section of the song where the tremolo picked, thrash beating side of the band reveals itself, not a moment goes by where you're not beat over the head with djenty chugging, lazy drumming, and the pop-metalcore sensibilities of any random Warped Tour 5th stager from the last half decade. It's as if the band decided upon completion of Neverbloom to alter its musical diet to nothing but post-haircut Attack Attack!, The Devil Wears Prada (minus the actually interesting elements of that band's more recent material), and any other band that just so happened to be signed to Rise Records since about 2011.
The song shifts from one section to another seamlessly enough, never really feeling fragmented or choppy, and never once does a breakdown just happen at a random point in a random measure, but everything here's so boring and generic that the flow of the tune being as fine as it is doesn't really matter. The only section of the song where I was not bored to tears was the aforementioned fast part, which happens for a grand total of 4 measures and is never revisited once during the remaining 3 minutes of the song's run time. What makes this especially maddening is that while the full length's longer songs still weren't all that interesting, they at least were fast and frenetic, which I could see distracting someone of less interest to particulars than myself from the banalities those songs presented. Here the band is just fully playing into the whole "Let's see how many breakdowns we can stuff into four minutes" angle, and it's kind of depressing that the band decided to do this, especially since if they had refined the more elaborate tunes from the full length they might have been onto something.
When it comes to the band members themselves, they sound so completely bored out of their faces here that I legitimately cannot believe anybody here, save maybe the vocalist, was actually having fun while making this song. The guitarists chug along like every other djent-influenced metal/deathcore guitarist does now, but their boredom is only surpassed by the drummer, who I'm imagining must have been tearing his hair out playing such hopelessly generic breakdowns and beats. It's the same guy from the full length, and on that record he was blasting and flailing about like any other extreme metal drummer will, so this would be like taking a giant winged eagle that flies around freely and putting it in a tiny cage where it can't move at all. The bass is silent, as usual, but I'm sure it's just doing whatever the guitars are at any given moment. The keyboards once again don't really play too much of an important role, playing the same role of (trying to) distract the listener from the principle instruments, and while it succeeds slightly better hear than on the full length due to the guitars doing much less, they still don't stand out well enough to carry the whole tune, unlike, say, the lush orchestras of newer Dimmu Borgir.
Clean vocals make a reappearance here, and they're just as interchangeable with literally any other girl's singing voice on the whole planet as they were before. As for the harsh vocals, Sean Harmanis has stuck to his mid-ranged shout to the detriment of the music, as his voice gets tiring to listen to very quickly solely due to how samey he sounds in the grand scheme of metalcore and deathcore. I will say that the production style here is significantly less terrible than the production on Neverbloom, as it never sounds like all the different elements of the music are trying to crush one another in volume, and everything is on a level where it is audible and not a distorted mess (save the bass, which, as noted, is silent). However, just like the piano, it simply isn't enough to save this song.
Even with my attitude of not really finding much interest in their debut record, Make Them Suffer at least showed signs of promise with Neverbloom that I sadly cannot say are present here. Even with that album's complacency in regards to just putting a bunch of breakdowns together and shouting over them, the songs that didn't adhere to that formula held moments of potential that could have led to a promising future had the band expanded on them. The black metal riffing, the at times lush synths, the (mostly) logical placing of breakdowns, it was all right there for the band to do what they would with. Rather than take those songs, refine the uninteresting elements and run with the good parts, they've done the complete opposite of that and have made a song that would not have been acceptable on even their debut, and think about some of the crap that was featured on that disc. If this is what the band is setting its future sights on and this is a sign of the music to be found on a future full length, then consider me eternally uninterested.
So yeah, this band released a new song. Having reviewed their debut record Neverbloom nearly a year ago, I've made it no secret that I did not really care for Make Them Suffer or their brand of symphonic deathcore. There were moments on that album that felt like a band wanting to create music beyond the parameters of your typical generic breakdown band, but at the same time so much of that record adhered to those genre prerequisites that it made for one intensely uninteresting album. Now nearly 10 months later, Make Them Suffer have affirmed their desire to suck with great force by creating and releasing the single "Let Me In", a testament to the pitfalls of writing songs based around breakdowns and how it almost never works.
Of the only two styles of songs Make Them Suffer knows how to write (those being ultra "brutal" breakdown tunes drenched in tough guy hardcore stupidity and slightly less idiotic, longer, black metal influenced blastfests), "Let Me In" is the former style in spades. Aside from one all too brief section of the song where the tremolo picked, thrash beating side of the band reveals itself, not a moment goes by where you're not beat over the head with djenty chugging, lazy drumming, and the pop-metalcore sensibilities of any random Warped Tour 5th stager from the last half decade. It's as if the band decided upon completion of Neverbloom to alter its musical diet to nothing but post-haircut Attack Attack!, The Devil Wears Prada (minus the actually interesting elements of that band's more recent material), and any other band that just so happened to be signed to Rise Records since about 2011.
The song shifts from one section to another seamlessly enough, never really feeling fragmented or choppy, and never once does a breakdown just happen at a random point in a random measure, but everything here's so boring and generic that the flow of the tune being as fine as it is doesn't really matter. The only section of the song where I was not bored to tears was the aforementioned fast part, which happens for a grand total of 4 measures and is never revisited once during the remaining 3 minutes of the song's run time. What makes this especially maddening is that while the full length's longer songs still weren't all that interesting, they at least were fast and frenetic, which I could see distracting someone of less interest to particulars than myself from the banalities those songs presented. Here the band is just fully playing into the whole "Let's see how many breakdowns we can stuff into four minutes" angle, and it's kind of depressing that the band decided to do this, especially since if they had refined the more elaborate tunes from the full length they might have been onto something.
When it comes to the band members themselves, they sound so completely bored out of their faces here that I legitimately cannot believe anybody here, save maybe the vocalist, was actually having fun while making this song. The guitarists chug along like every other djent-influenced metal/deathcore guitarist does now, but their boredom is only surpassed by the drummer, who I'm imagining must have been tearing his hair out playing such hopelessly generic breakdowns and beats. It's the same guy from the full length, and on that record he was blasting and flailing about like any other extreme metal drummer will, so this would be like taking a giant winged eagle that flies around freely and putting it in a tiny cage where it can't move at all. The bass is silent, as usual, but I'm sure it's just doing whatever the guitars are at any given moment. The keyboards once again don't really play too much of an important role, playing the same role of (trying to) distract the listener from the principle instruments, and while it succeeds slightly better hear than on the full length due to the guitars doing much less, they still don't stand out well enough to carry the whole tune, unlike, say, the lush orchestras of newer Dimmu Borgir.
Clean vocals make a reappearance here, and they're just as interchangeable with literally any other girl's singing voice on the whole planet as they were before. As for the harsh vocals, Sean Harmanis has stuck to his mid-ranged shout to the detriment of the music, as his voice gets tiring to listen to very quickly solely due to how samey he sounds in the grand scheme of metalcore and deathcore. I will say that the production style here is significantly less terrible than the production on Neverbloom, as it never sounds like all the different elements of the music are trying to crush one another in volume, and everything is on a level where it is audible and not a distorted mess (save the bass, which, as noted, is silent). However, just like the piano, it simply isn't enough to save this song.
Even with my attitude of not really finding much interest in their debut record, Make Them Suffer at least showed signs of promise with Neverbloom that I sadly cannot say are present here. Even with that album's complacency in regards to just putting a bunch of breakdowns together and shouting over them, the songs that didn't adhere to that formula held moments of potential that could have led to a promising future had the band expanded on them. The black metal riffing, the at times lush synths, the (mostly) logical placing of breakdowns, it was all right there for the band to do what they would with. Rather than take those songs, refine the uninteresting elements and run with the good parts, they've done the complete opposite of that and have made a song that would not have been acceptable on even their debut, and think about some of the crap that was featured on that disc. If this is what the band is setting its future sights on and this is a sign of the music to be found on a future full length, then consider me eternally uninterested.
There is no why in hell I'm reading all of that.