Contraband

I know I've given shit to Winds of Plague, but to be honest, I'd rather listen to them than to this. Make Them Suffer, huh? I see somebody took the name seriously, because I sure have suffered through this song. Deathcore is already a problematic genre, but symphonic deathcore seems to work even worse, mostly because nobody seems to be able to mesh the elements into a cohesive whole. If you have issues with deathcore, this single will not convince you otherwise. In fact, I wouldn't have found out about this single if not for some random Youtube browsing.

The symphonic stuff, while admittedly acceptable per se, does not mesh well with the rest of the instrumentation. The guitars just chug along, without any merit or purpose, while the drums are kind of... there. No good fills, not blastbeats, no... nothing worth a fig. In fact, at some points, it feels like like they're not synced up properly with the rest of the instruments, but that might be because everything else is disjointed and/or distracting. The bass cannot be heard, do I even need to say anything else at this point? As for the breakdown near the end, it's there for the sake of being there and annoying people even more.

That strikes down the instrumental part, what about the vocals? The vocals are, you guessed it, shit. In fact, I'd say they're the worst part of this track. The growls, if you can even call them that, are annoying, but the screams are even worse. In fact, the screams may be some of the worst I've heard, they almost feel like an unfunny parody. Johnny Plague is bad, true, but his vocals are, as weird as it may sound, not nearly as bad as what's featured here. OK, I admit that the cleans provided by Courtney LaPlante (from Spiritbox, if you care at all) ARE the best part of this single, but there’s only so much they can do when they're surrounded by the already described auditory pigswill. The lyrics are corny at best, but this is deathcore, I don’t know what I or anyone expected.

I fail to see how Make Them Suffer received any praise, but we do live in an unjust world. Say that you want about Winds of Plague, but they managed to squeeze out some decent sections, even if the end results were generally disjointed... which is still more than I can say for Make Them Suffer. All the points, whatever few I felt like giving, go to Courtney LaPlante, but only because she knows a thing or two about singing and because her vocals did provide some semblance of an auditory respite. These guys, though? If I were them, I'd take some serious music lessons. Either that or call it quits. But we know that's not gonna happen anytime soon.