Perth band Make Them Suffer are about to embark on one of the biggest tours of their career to date as they go across the US supporting Ice Nine Kills. The latest Ice Nine Kills album has been one of the most successful heavy album of the year and the tour is fast selling out meaning that for Make Them Suffer they will be playing in front of some of the biggest US crowds they have ever been exposed to.

The tour will also prove to be a good warm up for when they return to their home soil and play at UNFIY this coming January. When HEAVY Magazine recently chatted to Sean Harmanis it was easy to tell that he is pretty stoked with how things are going at the moment.

“Well the album is still being mixed,” he says when I ask him about the album that the band have just recorded in LA. “I’ve tried my hardest not to listen to the album at all because you can get a warped perception as you get used to listening to the songs as demo songs before you get the final master back. I think that can make a lot of artists go insane because they keep second guessing themselves, second guessing the album. It took a lot of strength for me to walk away from the mix of the last album and think ‘so this is what it is it sounds different to the demos and I just have to accept that.’”

“Every artist always likes the newer material obviously,” he continues. “That is because it is fresh for them but I think what we have accomplished on this album sound-wise. We are harnessing more what sounds make us us. We have been delving into that and trying to work out what we can get away with – it is a bigger sound but it is also a heavier sound. It is definitely heavier than the last album but at the same time I think the more melodic side of the album really stands out as well. We are chuffed with it.”

That leads me to ask with the heavier side of the album was something that the band set out to create this time around or whether it was just the natural evolution of the band. “I think it was more the natural evolution of the band,” Harmanis says after thinking for a moment. “I mean we just had so much fun doing our most recent single – ‘Hollowed Heart’ – it was just a nice change for us coming off the back of Worlds Apart, which I still think in my opinion is my favourite album that we have released, but it was a breath of fresh air for us because just in the sense of the writing process it has gone to being heavy again and I think we were just trying to embrace that as much as possible on the new one. We’re hoping that it will be out either early or mid next year… before the Australian winter I hope.”

It also sounds like Make Them Suffer fans are in for something special at UNIFY because Harmanis says, “Firstly this will be our last Australian performance for quite some time and it may be the last time we play some of the older songs, don’t hold me to that but we will be putting out a lot of new material and we are stoked with the new stuff. So if you want to see some of the older stuff in the live setting this may be it!”

So get along to UNIFY and lap it up as Make Them Suffer evolves right in front of you.