Let Me In

This single has been out for almost an entire year ago, I saw it the day it premiered with its accompanying music video, I hated it. I hated this song, I hated the fucking shit out of it. Being a Make Them Suffer fan, this song was the cheesiest thing I never would have expected from a band who got me so wet as I would listen to their Neverbloom album on almost a daily occurrence, but alas that was changed. It just needed time to get used to.

Best thing is said first here; do NOT listen to this expecting a Make Them Suffer song. They have dropped nearly all death metal influence; this track is not a brutal yet ironically elegant deathcore song like most of which you heard from MTS in the past. No, this song is a metalcore track backed up with harmonizing keyboards, melodic riffs, agonizing/tortured metalcore screams and backing clean vocals provided by their female keyboardist. Lyrics? Yeah those angst ridden as angst can get with a strange eastern classical metaphor attached to them as well revolving around a woman whom the vocalist obviously loved that he is referring to as "Annie" in this track and refusing to let her go and vows to change for the better of falling in love once once more.

The teenage angst of most metalcore is definitely present in this song lyrically, just wrapped up and masked in a classical/theatrical metaphor to attempt to dodge away from falling into being called "emo" or "childish" from most music critics. Of course, in my personal opinion I don't care how the lyrics would come off to me any way. Write about what effects you and what pains you the most. That's what music is about and I'd be wrong to judge someone's perspective to their own words hence the narrative of why they wrote the song to begin with. But that's just me. Enough rambling now. Onto the musical input of this single....

...What we have here is stylistically, the same thing Make Them Suffer has been known for, just all their death metal influence is taken away. So instead of being brutal with keyboards, this song is just lukewarm heavy with keyboards. Think Northlane just without the djent-djent-djent riffs while simultaneously happened to have kidnapped Cradle of Filth's keyboard player in the process and immediately headed to the studio to record a single and you have this track. Vocalist Sean Harmanis' voice is almost a tad different. His throaty growl isn't used here as much as you'd hope and is replaced with a more breathy metalcore rasp.

Also the drums. That's a weird of a story also. Blast beats are gone too. They even have a fill-in verse a minute and-a-half in where the drummer does that hardcore "pancing" thing that bands like The Plot in You do. Overall the whole thing just feels light. But the song itself is amazing and you can actually feel the pain emitting from your headphone or stereo as this song place. Absolutely amazing track and opens up Make Them Suffer's sound to a new boundary of possibilities and no longer just being a Winds of Plague clone.

In my wholehearted honesty, I'll say it again; I hated this song for the longest while because... it just wasn't Make Them Suffer. But that's like hating St. Anger because it isn't Master of Puppets (which a lot of people do for that simple fact alone). I think there's some sort of silly connection with how humans react to their favorite bands. If they release a new album that sounds too different from their previous material; they hate it simply because it was the same band that made it. But ironically, I tend to believe if it was a different band that had released that same exact song, they'd most likely love the hell out of it. That's just my new view for Make Them Suffer and this song in itself and for all intents and purposes, I would not mind at all seeing the band releasing material that sounds like this single coupled with other songs that carry their Neverbloom sound all into one release.

8/10