Cutthroat Invoking The Terror Review
Cutthroat
Invoking Terror
Dying Victims Productions
2026
Cutthroat. Not only the name of a fury-filled, crust-ridden Dublin, Ireland-based classic death metal power trio, but also defined as the following: “To be cutthroat means to act in a ruthless, intense, or unprincipled manner to achieve success, showing no concern for harming competitors or colleagues. It describes a highly competitive, "dog-eat-dog" environment where people use vicious or unfair tactics to win. Key characteristics include being merciless, calculating, and prioritizing personal gain over others. — Merriam-Webster. That's a pretty apt description of the five songs coming from the debut EP Invoking Terror.
After recording two demos in 2023 and 2025, Cutthroat hooked it up with Germany’s Dying Victims Productions for this all-out rager. When I say these dudes are old school, I mean they are OLD SCHOOL. Ear-piercing feedback, a raw midrange and trebly distortion-soaked guitar sound, vocals that aren't so much growled as they are shrieked and bellowed (in the finest Jeff Becerra tradition) behind dirty bass and absolutely unpolished, loose, chaotic drums. These are the earliest tenets in which death metal began in the mid-80’s, and Cutthroat are unapologetically unrefined in their worship of them.
As I mentioned, this bloody and disgusting wall of sound comes from a three-piece, with the cast of characters being B.McG - Bass, Lead Vocals, B.M - All Guitars and Backing Vocals, and C.S - Drums. They dole out thrashing, pinch-harmonic-heavy feral DM in “March of the Damned” and then drop an anvil of gore-soaked blackened madness on our heads with “Invoking Terror,” which has a MEAN mid-paced choral refrain. A tip of the hat to ancient Sumerian mythos and Morbid Angel follows with the blazing tremolo-picked “Azathoth’s Lair” that rumbles into some unhinged and reverberated lead work before a sinister harmonized breakdown ends it all at a mere 2:40. This is something that I feel sets Cutthroat apart from many of their “new old school” contemporaries. There is an almost hardcore punk sense of urgency here to get in, bludgeon you to death, and get the hell out before we know what hit us. I friggin love it. “Morbid Rites” is a thrashier cut with some simpler riffing and more of a d-beat pace.
To cap things off, we are back to pure ferocity and pinch harmonics, weaving in and out of blasting lunacy and double-kick-led plod on “Life Beyond the Grave.” With that, the whole thing is over after 25 breathless minutes that leaves no meat whatsoever on the bone. Cutthroat slices and dice their way through these songs as if they are an angry, nicotine-deprived co-worker laying waste to a break room upon learning they aren't getting a cigarette break. God help you if you get in their way, too. It is incredibly refreshing to hear something so nostalgically raw, lively, and so barely produced in this day and age of overproduced, over-quantized, and overplayed music. No message, no story, no damn trends is the order of the day. Everything within this album feels as if it could go off the rails any second.
In conclusion, you need to gleefully lay your hard-earned money upon their altar of madness, and maybe, just maybe, you'll be granted severed survival from these leprous minions. Cutthroat ain't interested at all in reinventing the wheel, they just wanna run you over with it, maniacally laughing the entire time before ripping the doors off seven separate churches…
RIYL- Autopsy, Possessed, Morbid Angel, Merciless, Necrovore
~TB