If your political views are informed by even a smidgen of humanity, then calling a right-wing hotbed such as North Carolina your home is bound to lead to an uncontainable sense of frustration. So it is with three-piece, MAKE, a band whose previous, immersive Axis EP and Golden Veil albums gravitated towards the more atmospheric ends of the doom and post-metal spectrums, but now find their anger boiling over into something more direct and abrasive.
Not surprising considering the current political climate in the run-up to the US presidential elections, MAKE’s new album, Pilgrimage Of Loathing, due for release on July 15 via Accident Prone Records, is their heaviest and most abrasive release, taking in black metal, mammoth riffs like tectonic plates getting down and dirty with each other, belligerent doom and interludes of lush, surface-rippling guitar textures that, rather than provide any respite, sound like a sinkhole for the American psyche.
For an album that journeys through so many textures, Pilgrimage Of Loathing adds up to a cohesive, if restless worldview, and we have a special preview in the agitated form of Birthed Into A Grave They Made For You – both a stripped-down, hollering protest and a wounded search for sense whose post-punk riffs ratchet up the tension until the track’s incendiary endgame.
“This record is very much a response to all of the horrible, horrible shit happening in America right now,” says MAKE frontman Scott Endres. “So much to be ashamed of. We loathe the police who kill minorities, we loathe the politicians who paint targets on minority groups for career gain, we loathe the general complacency of the entire populous, we loathe the media who gave Trump the time of day, we loathe the oligarchy the country has become. So much loathing, so much awfulness. And we trudge through it with our middle fingers in the air saying, ‘We are not fucking OK with any of this.’”
Fuel up your fury, raise your banners and channel your anger through Birthed Into A Grave They Made For You below!
Storm MAKE’s Facebook page here!
And pre-order Pilgrimage Of Loathing here!
