Shame - Cutthroat

Cutthroat is Shame at their blistering best—an unapologetic new album, supercharged under the direction of Grammy-winning producer John Congleton. It's bold, unrelenting, and 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 into a formidable force, pairing ambitious sonic ideas with the technical skill to pull them off. With a reputation built on legendary live shows and three critically acclaimed albums, the band approached Cutthroat determined to start fresh—to create their own 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 our foundation. We live in crazy times, but it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you.’” That spirit is sharpened by the influence of Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen), whose no-nonsense approach helped streamline and focus the band’s evolving ideas.

While stamped with Shame’s signature dark humor, Cutthroat casts an unflinching eye on the chaos of modern life: conflict, corruption, hunger, desire, lust, envy, and the ever-present specter of cowardice. It plays with these themes gleefully, turning them over with knowing smirks and clenched fists.

Musically, the record breaks new ground. Coyle-Smith had been experimenting with electronic loops on tour, once separate from the band’s sound—but on Cutthroat, those ideas found a home. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good,” he says. “If you got it right, it stayed.”

The result is an album that embraces life's contradictions—messy, funny, furious, and self-aware. It doesn’t claim to have answers, and as Steen puts it with a grin: “I’m not here to answer the questions. I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” But one thing is clear: with Cutthroat, Shame have never sounded better.