Review Summary: Hell at a medium boil.
Secret Cutter is just another slightly above average battered and beaten hardcore band.
Now that that's perfectly clear, let's get another point out in the open, it would be pointless to discuss the lyrical content of this LP, because although it's definitely above average for a band of this caliber and genre, with this vocal delivery that seemingly bludgeons you over the head with a silver platter, what is said by this apparently angry man behind the mic is completely null and void. What really brings this album down from being the breath of fresh air this band has the potential to deliver has to do not with what the metaphorical platter is composed of, but more or less how far the blow of it caves in your skull.
What the bands' debut EP, If You Don't Hate Yourself, You Aren't Paying Attention, accomplished through the vocals was just completely rude. From the first line of Occupational Shutdown, you get these demon-esque vocals that could for all I know resemble the sound of hell incarnate.. While how the vocals are put forth on this self-titled record are not different much in the pitch, they drastically lack the raw, ear-lacerating edge that the vocalist previously was able to inflict on the bands' listeners.
The almost exact same gripes I had with the vocals can be applied to the instrumentation as well. If You Don't Hate Yourself... had a thick, grating sludge in the guitar that was bone-crushingly unique, and had a hell of a crushing sound to the drums. The mixing was on point and complemented how this band played to a T, creating an atmosphere of getting the *** beaten out of you over, and over, and over again. This album had none of that. The drums sounded weak, and the guitar tone that has the generic "sludge" that makes them come off as nothing more as a hardcore band trying to be nothing but that; hardcore.
Despite as much *** as I've given this album, or I could give this album, it isn't bad in near any sense of the word. To reiterate what I said in beginning, Secret Cutter is just aggressive hatred filled hardcore. With any album that falls within the genre, it has its moments. There are several songs on this that are sure to conjure up a wild pit full of hardcore dancers in your city's local underground venues/abandoned warehouse. The songs are good, most of them at least, but my biggest problem is that this band could have done so much better, alas, this album is only good for what it is.
