Southern sludge/post-metal outfit Make are back after a 10-year absence and they’re back at playing weight, retooling and expanding their lineup for their fourth album, Exegesis at the End of Time. Arriving a decade after the last Make album, Exegesis sees new members John Crouch (drums) and Aaron Smithers (bass/synth/vocals) join the core duo of Scott Endres (guitar, vocals) and Spencer Lee (bass, guitar, vocals).
The songs on Exegesis at the End of Time feel larger and more monumental than anything Make have crafted before, taking the highs of their last release (2016’s Pilgrimage of Loathing) and expanding them into larger, more flowing compositions. There are traces of Neurosis and Isis throughout Exegesis, plus influence from Rosetta, Rwake and their ilk.
“After about a thousand wrenches got thrown in our works for a decade, somehow, we’re beyond thrilled to be back with another offering of hope and despair delicately balancing on the edge of a world rapidly being destroyed by a perverted ruling class who have no right to share the planet with the rest of us,” Endres tells Decibel, summarizing an idea he expands on in a Q&A, which you can read below.
Exegesis at the End of Time is out June 12 on Accident Prone Records.
10 years is a long time between records. What’s been up in the time since?
Scott: It’s… complicated. We were treading water for a long time working on a twenty to twenty-five minute long song that had many different movements within it. So during that time we were either working on perfecting that song, or rehearsing a set for live performances. There was very little movement in getting anything else written or done. Then we finally had time booked at Lgt Biz with Kris Hilbert in Greensboro, NC, and a month or so before we were set to go record, our previous drummer had to back out for personal reasons.
Before we could re-book any time, Kris left the studio and moved to NYC. Within months of that, COVID dropped. Then I got laid off. Then our previous drummer and I started a new project called Protozoa just to get out of isolation. Eventually we brought in Spencer and Aaron and it was us exploring more of our noise rock and post-hardcore roots. We did that for a minute until we had a falling out with our drummer. We then started MAKE back up and asked Aaron if he wanted to keep playing music with us, and John was the first person we reached out to for filling the drum slot. Then I got laid off again. We never really meant to have a hiatus. Life just really did a number on us and suddenly ten years had gone by.
This album is the first time in quite a while that Make is a quartet. How did the additions of John and Aaron change the writing, recording and general sound?
Scott: The two most significant changes were making room for a synthesizer and then Aaron taking on bass duties, which allowed Spencer to explore a vast sonic map on guitar. For the longest time, I was rhythm and lead, and the last time we were four I was doing most of the lead work, so it’s been really kind of liberating just being able to focus on the outlines and letting everybody else do the coloring (there are of course exceptions to this, we all contribute in various areas, but we also now kind of have the main corners we stick to). And what it did, in practical terms, is it allowed us to explore much more intensely the noise-rock side of our tastes… which is really where my heart of hearts is at, at the end of the day, ever since I was like 17 and heard Drive Like Jehu, because while I’m holding down the fort with Aaron and John, Spencer can just go apeshit.
Spencer: I’m really amazed at how much having Aaron and John has expanded what we are able to do as a band. Like you said, we’ve been a three-piece for a long time, and I’ve always enjoyed the challenges of trying to create music that sounds “full” with a minimal instrumentation, but the expansion of sounds we can explore now is a huge breath of fresh air. Our overall sound retains a lot of the elements we’ve always had, but I feel like we’re able to expand on those ideas much more effectively now and pull things out of the music that I’ve always wanted to hear.
My understanding of the record, which is titled Exegesis, is that it has a general theme influenced by various literary works. Can you expand on what that theme is and what influenced it?
Scott: If there is an overarching theme that the title is hinting at, it’s about gaining knowledge and wisdom over the course of your life, or many lifetimes, only to reach the very end and find that there’s nobody left to hear it, or who’s willing to listen, because we’ve fucked things up that badly as a species, but I wouldn’t say the album exactly has a single concept or theme holding it together. As far as the various literary works, I’m a massive lit nerd, and I often get very excited about what I’m currently reading and want to incorporate it into my own art somehow. There’s a passage in Gravity’s Rainbow (“The real movement is not from death to any rebirth. It is from death to death-transfigured”) that struck me particularly because of how it could be reinterpreted from the specific way it’s meant in that book to explain the daily struggle that all of us are faced with every day. A struggle that we have to endure without help from anybody but ourselves and our communities. Our world is run by an oligarchy that has less than no interest in us, would rather be rid of us, so our struggle seems insurmountable. But, even so, we find the space and the means to create art, and experience joy, and love. We are experiencing death daily, but through our communities we get to experience death made more beautiful. This is why there is a change at the very end of the record that goes from a feeling of hopelessness to one of triumphant transcendence. That, at least, is the most important theme within the album, at least to me personally.
Spencer: When I read, I tend to read political and social theory. I’m inspired by people who can interpret the pitfalls of the way we live and envision alternatives, and I love when theorists synthesize ideas out of combinations of other existing social theories. One of the things that was so exciting to me about the way this album came together is that, even though the texts we’re drawing inspiration from are wildly different, there’s a thread through all of them that really speaks to our worldview. The way those texts express their authors across so many different styles and periods of time reminds me that people have long understood what we can now express with hard data: that humans and Earth bear absolutely enormous potential, and that potential is constantly undermined by a drive for profit and power that will destroy us all.
Your quote about the record notes the “perverted ruling class” and their negative impact on the world. Do you think it’s the obligation of artists to say something and try to give people a rallying point?
Scott: After George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan, Howard Zinn gave a lecture at Mass Art in Boston, where I was living at the time. And he had this great quote about this very thing, where he was addressing artists specifically, that was something like “As artists you do not need to do more than create art. You are doing enough just by giving yourself in this way, and giving people items of value. BUT! As artists, you are all uniquely positioned to speak up and speak out against injustice because you inherently have platforms, your work is a conversation with an audience, so don’t lose sight of that.”
I’m massively paraphrasing, but that’s a good way of looking at it. Using a word like “obligation” seems a little extreme to me on the one hand, but on the other… I am personally disappointed when I don’t hear from artists I respect about issues such as the genocide in Gaza. Personally disappointed that they’re not using their platform, and simultaneously disappointed that they either don’t care, or they’re too cowardly to do the right thing. I just hesitate to say “obligated” because I don’t like the idea of an audience demanding anything from the artists they follow.
Spencer: I agree with Scott here, and want to add that there are a lot of different ways to make “political” art. I think artists should be allowed to make art that is expressly apolitical, but I think that most genuine art is “political” in the sense that it provides a perspective on the human experience, which can motivate people to question their circumstances. There’s also a huge spectrum of art that is political, and I think artists should be free to explore that without having to worry about whether they’re making their politics obvious enough. Every word I wrote for this album is political to me, but someone who doesn’t know me might not hear it in every song. I feel like we’re the frogs in the boiling water, and the more of us who realize it, the better the odds of finding a way out of the pot. My hope is that my horror with our circumstances resonates with my fellow frogs.
What comes next for Make, now that you have a new lineup and record?
Scott: We’re still writing new material, we’re still trying to hit the road when we can and when the world will have us… hopefully this record reminds people we exist so that gets a little easier. And the plan is to just keep writing, playing shows and making records. There’s absolutely no way the world kicks our ass in the same way that keeps us down for another ten years! Hopefully we’re back in the studio in the next year or so. That’s my personal goal.
Spencer: I’m really excited to keep expanding on what we do. Exploring sound with these guys is a blast.
