“Cutthroat is a joyride. 

It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.

It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.

It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.

’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.”

– shame

Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.” 

An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.

Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them. 

Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero. 

“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”

Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.

Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.

Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.

Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.