If you follow Make Them Suffer, you may have come across their newest single ‘Hollowed Heart’, the groups most confrontational piece of music yet.
“The song was inspired by a horrible story that I heard from a close friend of mine. I saw a particular situation that she went through and is still going through,” reflects Sean Harmanis, the groups lead vocalist. “I have been asked not to delve too deep into it in interviews, so I’ve kept all my statements very succinct because I do want to respect the privacy of my friend but a long story short; it was a horrible and scaring experience for her that was within the realm of sexual assault.
“The song is more so about how she’s coped with it and how she’s doing so well and then also to whoever did that action; fuck you.”
Being the groups newest single, Make Them Suffer have actually already finished up their newest album and are just waiting on the masters back and surprisingly, ‘Hollowed Heart’ may not actually make it onto the album.
“We are definitely taking our time with it. We aren’t even sure if ‘Hollowed Heart’ will be on it because we have so many good songs that have been recorded but haven’t been released. We just don’t want to rush anything with this one so it’s looking at being released early to mid next year.
“I think with this album we are just trying to bring ideas and genres to the table that we haven’t done before,” Sean continues. “It’s hard to articulate because all of the songs on the record really have their own personalities and styles to them.
“We have been drawing influences from bands like 30 Seconds To Mars, and then there are other songs which draw influence from bands like Meshuggah. It’s pretty varied.
“We experimented with using Booka’s voice as a sample, so recording her and turning her voice into a synthesizer in a sense. There are a few fun things we’ve done on this record; most of the experimentation has come from a production standpoint.”
With the album being a fair while off its release, Make Them Suffer will be filling in the meantime with a regional run.
“We are super excited man. From memory, the last regional tour we did was in 2016 with Parkway Drive so it’s been a few years for us. But this will actually be our first-ever headliner regional tour so we are very excited about that prospect.
“Some of these towns we haven’t played for years and it is definitely something I feel I’ve missed out on a bit. When we first started touring Australia, the routing that the booking agents would send you on was a lot of regional and rural communities and tours would go for 2-3 weeks but now it seems like when we get booked it’s all the major cities and it’s done in five days.
“It’ll be a nice change for us and I’m super excited to be doing this tour. I feel there is an energy you get from those intimate shows in smaller communities that you don’t get from capital city shows so I’m excited.”
When & Where: Karova Lounge, Ballarat – September 4 & Barwon Club, Geelong – September 5.
Written by Alex Callan