It’s been two years since @shame wreaked havoc on our stage — and this autumn, they’re back for another legendary show on Tuesday, October 28.
“Our live shows aren’t performance art — they’re direct, confrontational, and raw.” Yeah, we felt that. And we want more.
This time, they’re bringing Cutthroat — a bold, unapologetic new album calling out cowards, hypocrites, and society’s favorite hot takes.
Still in their twenties and having proved themselves several times over via legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums, the five childhood friends - Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes - went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
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.