The Cutthroats 9
Anger Management

THE REVIEW

Slashes, lacerating cuts, and again scouring lashes.

This is what the sharp quartet The Cutthroats 9 dispensed with full instruments in the six whirlwind tracks expelled from this massively concise, and final, micro-L.P. dated 2001.

Chris Spencer (despotic screams, Celtic harp), having moved to California in collusion with the faithful Dave Curran and having set aside the better-known (Unsane) project that paved the way for a substantial series of significant works for those who enjoy exploring the evolutions and derailing peak vertiginousness of the most vile and cynical rock sound from early nineties New York, decided, at the dawn of the new millennium, to re-engage artistically without deviating one imperceptible jot from what had previously been sown and reaped, that is, persevering in the offspring of the best he had been able to propose so far: boisterously abundant rock.

Adopting a new moniker and incorporating two willing blacksmiths into the lineup, the resurging entity first dispenses a successful eponymous long-distance test and then the condensed musical-cementitious piece treated herein: a perfect, gratifying extract of purist, heavy, titanic noise-rock without the slightest mainstream-concession (did someone say Helmet?).

What impresses most about such "daring" operation, beyond its impressive resolve, is the remarkable and varied "substantive" quality of the scraps it houses: consider, merely by way of example, the furious, stentorian, very squared initial assault "Prey": a sound so/ferociously Insano that indeed crazier than this it could not be: a pyroclastic spectacle! Only in the concluding track ("Saw It") is there a faint sign of differentiation; a sporadic attempt at a new use of more linear and "clean" vocal lines: luckily the whole is completely overwhelmed by a significantly ruinous shroud of Watts!

Not even seventeen minutes total of enticing sideswipes from which we are joyfully overwhelmed and captivated; a work of apparent objective incongruity** and despite the daily, massive, and repeated doses of assorted music inflicted on our bewildered head, it truly struggles to blur.

* in hindsight: potentially "filler" work forged by a fundamentally interlocutory band; shortly thereafter Chris revived the old moniker;

** the average human life consists of about [quarter-more, quarter-less] 1,878,000 quarters of an hour per capita;