Wilytank (Originally posted by me to Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives; http://www.metal-archives.com/)

I'm all for the idea of symphonic extreme metal; but if you're planning to do it with your band, could you at least do it right? Deathcore isn't a very likable genre in the first place to fans of extreme metal, so throwing in a keyboard, while a daring move, may be yet futile. Abigail Williams were able to pull it off by at least making some throwbacks to melodic black metal which melded quite well, while acts like Winds of Plague fell way short of the good mark by maintaining too much deathcore influence, and yet some of their material does have some intriguing moments. Where does Make Them Suffer's 'Lord of Woe' fit in? Unfortunately, the latter category.

Standard deathcore with a keyboard and some extra melody thrown in is actually exactly what this is. Whenever the keyboard plays its parts the overall tempo of the songs are at a faster tempo with the drums doing their typical blastbeating and the guitars going off in a melodic sounding wave. When the keyboards are not playing, this EP sounds like your typical deathcore release: chug cruft, your standard tough guy sounding vox, the whole nine yards. But not even the non-deathcore parts help this album much. The instrumental work in those sections is underwhelming as the guitars do a rather uninspiring performance that end up being mostly buried beneath the dominant keyboard anyway. Another really bad thing about the delivery of this concept is how the deathcore and symphonic metal sections are put together. The transitions sound really awkward as the songs go from this attempt to create a swirling majestic symphonic atmosphere to this generic deathcore breakdown. This is the same problem that Winds of Plague has had with their own shit; you've got the very disliked deathcore genre with the iffy symphonic metal influence that could really go either way in terms of quality. As a result, both of the genres in the mix end up sounding weak, and its really awkward when I look at parts to see how much of a mess they are laid side by side such as the beginnings of "Summoning Storms" and "Lord of Woe" where the former opens with the keys and tries to go into the symphonic realm right away and the latter starts off with an incredibly deathcore flavored passage.

As unpleasent as this is, it could have been worse. That isn't any real justification to really praise it though; I'm just counting blessings. At least the deathcore influence isn't too strong like in the vein of Suicide Silence or Chelsea Grin. At least the lyrics don't suck as much ass as Winds of Plague's do. Unfortunately, when you're reduced to counting blessings for a release, the release is typically more bad than good, which is what 'Lord of Woe' turns out to be. Listen to something else.

(45/100)