Cutthroats 9
Emo’s, Wednesday 13 Yeah, it’s rock & roll, but who ever said it has to be fun? Not the Unsane. The NYC noise rawkers made a 10-year career out of plumbing the deep, dark, frightful secrets of the city that never sleeps. The results were always loud, full of life, and at times goddamn briefs-soiling scary. They had a musical niche, and they had it in an airtight stranglehold at all times. So, it’s a very good thing that frontman Chris Spencer’s new band the Cutthroats 9 continue to conjure those very same bloody sheets of noise via Spencer’s ferociously distorted vocals. Spencer moved to San Francisco before founding the Cutthroats, but he’s still Big Apple tough to the core, sporting a backward Yankees baseball cap onstage at his well-attended showcase at Emo’s. There’s nary a difference between the Cutthroats’ sound and the Unsane’s later material, except maybe a lack of the telepathic precision that the former band developed late in their lease. The only momentum-killer was a slow, grinding number, a sound the Cutthroats couldn’t pull off nearly as well as their current tourmates High on Fire, who played the club the night before. Spencer closed things off by dedicating a song to his grandmother, who died four days prior. No sappy balladry here. It was another screaming, murderous romp, probably not dissimilar to the unpleasantries one must inevitably face at death’s door. Not a pleasant thought, but then the Cutthroats 9 are anything but pleasant.This article appears in March 15 • 2002.