The post-punk genre has been enjoying a revival recently, and the youthful band shame has been at the forefront of this exciting movement. With a natural knack for live performance and an undeniable discography that stamps them as a force of nature from the beginning, the London-based five-piece have become poster children for this new era of post-punk. The band built this short yet fruitful legacy on the back of their lofty visions, consistently finding new ways to present their experimental art via warping balladry, like on 2023’s Food for Worms, or explosive, melodic punk, like on their landmark debut, Songs of Praise.
With a growing discography filled with surprise sonic turns, the announcement of a new album from shame arrives with some skepticism. Will the band’s experimental tendencies land them on another stroke of brilliance, or will the power of artistic freedom override the relatability and personality that makes their left-field approach so digestible? The answer is held within Cutthroat, shame’s fourth studio LP. With the help of super-producer John Congleton, shame created a new blistering, no-nonsense sound. These 12 songs are face-melting, immersive, clunky in the best way possible, and more than anything, they’re wildly cathartic. Cutthroat feels like a honed temper tantrum from a toddler wise beyond its years, as shame pairs their thought-provoking, blunt lyrics with blazing tempos.
The more time you spend with Cutthroat, the more you realize how aptly named this collection of songs is. The lyrics are filled with harsh reality checks and brutal honesty, almost as if everything shame has kept bottled up is being unleashed on their fourth album. While wide-ranging and at times frantic, shame’s songwriting never loses sight of the album’s vision. Cutthroat continues the band’s miraculous trend of never allowing their lofty visions to overtake the messages being projected through their music, and the messages on these songs are plentiful. “Cowards Around” aims at those who seem to go out of their way to commit social faux pas, while “Plaster” finds shame questioning some deep, complex emotions. “Lampião” acts as a breather from the truthful onslaught of this tracklist, as the band explores the history of Brazil’s most notorious bandit and finds vocalist Charlie Steen singing in Portuguese.
It wouldn’t be a shame album if every sonic opportunity weren’t seized, and the band held nothing back on Cutthroat. While it is easy to become captivated by the reality-altering reminders sprinkled throughout the album’s lyrics, it is the arrangement behind these words that drills their points into your soul. From the pulsating drums and awkward structure of “After Party” to the explosive, more traditional post-punk anthem, “To and Fro,” there are splashes of artistic growth that emphasize the sentiment behind Cutthroat. “Screwdriver” subtly harkens back to shame’s roots, while moments like “Packshot,” with eerie undertones and firework-esque crescendos, create a beautiful marriage between the band’s new sonic terrain and emotional lyrics. That combination is what makes Cutthroat yet another successful reinvention of shame’s sound. The band’s fourth album proves to be much more than that, though, as the young five-piece also reminds the world that their fearlessness is not performative; This is a band that is hellbent on doing whatever it is they feel like.
