The Cutthroats 9 "Anger Management": Bleeding Priest's Bay Area Metal Spotlight 23
- Bleeding Priest
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
What’s up everybody? Will Carroll back here again with Bleeding Priest’s Bay Area Metal Spotlight. And it’s been a minute. It’s been long enough where my beard’s back. How about that?
But the band I’m covering today is one of my old bands. Not necessarily a metal band, but absolutely heavy and one of the heaviest bands I’ve been in. And that is The Cutthroats 9.
I’m going to be covering our second release, the EP Anger Management. It came out in 2002, I believe, on a label called Reptilian Records. It’s one of my favorite recordings I’ve ever done. The drums came out great. They sound fantastic. It’s one of my favorite snare captures I have on tape.
This was recorded at the Record Plant in Sausalito, so that’s why it sounds so fucking good. That’s as big as it gets for high-end studios. Metallica recorded there. Rumours by Fleetwood Mac was recorded there. So we were working with some high-end stuff and a beautiful facility.
The drum room I tracked in was huge with high ceilings. It just sounded amazing. It was a thrill to be there for the short amount of time I was.
You might ask yourself how the hell The Cutthroats 9 got an opportunity to record at such a prestigious studio. There’s a story to that. A friend of ours was an intern there, and he snuck us in during off hours when no band was scheduled.
Between sessions, he snuck us in one day and it was a rush job. At least for me it was. I got in there, set up my drums, and tracked in what I believe was the same room where some of Rumours was recorded. He even gave us a tour. The same rugs were still there from the 70s, the same piano, and tons of old gear mixed with high-end new technology I didn’t even recognize.
We had to move fast. We couldn’t be discovered or he would’ve gotten in serious trouble. We set up my kit, miked everything, and started getting tones. But we ran into an issue with playback. I couldn’t hear anything in my headphones, which was eating up time.
Eventually I said, “Fuck it. I’m just going to track my drums from memory.”
So I didn’t wear headphones at all. He hit record and said “Go.” I played all six songs on the spot. Maybe a couple were done twice, but most of the EP is first take. I have to pat myself on the back for that because tracking six songs from memory is pretty fucking hard.
A little background on the band. The Cutthroats 9 was me on drums and Chris Spencer from Unsane on guitar and vocals. Unsane had just broken up and Old Grandad was on hiatus. We met at a Neurosis show at the Great American Music Hall, partied all night, and by the next day we were already jamming in my studio.
Everything moved fast. We had our first full album written within a couple of weeks of meeting each other. This EP features original bass player Mark Laramie.
When I was tracking drums, Chris was in the control room playing along visually, even though I couldn’t hear him. It actually helped. I tracked all six songs in about an hour and got out of there.
One funny thing happened while we were there. Our buddy Billy, the intern, told me to keep a low profile. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t wander around too much. Of course, that went in one ear and out the other.
I wandered into a lounge area with a tabletop Galaga machine. A guy was playing and absolutely crushing it. I wanted a turn, so I probably said something. He stopped mid-game, stood up, looked at me, said “Good luck,” and walked away.
I looked at the score and it was the highest I’d ever seen. I was later told that guy was the drummer for the Dave Matthews Band. Not sure if that’s true, but that’s what I heard. Either way, I apparently pissed him off.
So yeah, I did my drums quickly, and Chris handled the rest of the parts. The record came out great. Reptilian Records released it on blue vinyl. The packaging is cheap as hell, but it was the first vinyl I was ever on, so it meant a lot.
These records are rare now. No reissues. They go for around $70, which is a lot for a 10-inch EP.
We toured like maniacs for this record. Did a seven-week tour with High on Fire, which was the best run we had. Another San Francisco band, Lost Goat, opened those shows.
We may not have been a metal band, but we were heavy as fuck and got respect from people in the metal scene. I remember Eric Peterson from Testament saw us play and talked to me about possibly doing shows with Dragonlord.
One of the biggest moments was playing the second-to-last show Paul Baloff ever did with Exodus in San Francisco. It was at the Covered Wagon, a tiny venue, which made it even crazier. Decapitator opened, Matt Harvey’s thrash band, and we supported.
Some of the regulars at Lucifer’s Hammer weren’t happy about us being on the bill. But Gary Holt personally requested us. He saw us play and asked for us. So yeah, fuck you.
It was an honor. Paul Baloff played one more show after that in Sacramento, and then he was gone. A real tragedy.
Since this EP came out, The Cutthroats 9 has played sporadically. We’ll disappear for years, then come back for a tour or some local gigs. We did record another album years later around 2013 or 2014. It’s good, but it doesn’t compare to this. This was our peak.
The songs are fast as hell. You can tell we were high on speed during a lot of the writing and recording. That was just how the band operated at the time.
If you want to hear some really heavy, non-metal heaviness, track this down. It’s hard to find, both on vinyl and CD, but it’s out there.
I’ll see you next time with something purely metal. I promise.
–Bleeding Priest
