Metal Therapy

In the early 90's, before I moved to Maryland for college, I started to get into metal - heavy metal, that is. The local college radio stations around Albany, from RPI and SUNY Albany, played lots of good hip-hop and metal, and it was primarily through these shows that I found new music.

In 1995 I came across a local band called Cutthroat when I heard one of their songs played on WRPI. It was my first contact with "hardcore", a style of metal that typically emphasizes short, brutal guitar riffs over solos, quick (three minutes or less) songs over long, drawn-out, tempo-changing opuses, and pretty consistent lyrical content - anger. Cutthroat was signed to Ruffneck Records, an independent label based out of Clifton Park. One day I went down to a music store deep in Albany and found their first CD called Hatebreedsrage. It was the first non-hip-hop album I'd bought in probably five years, and I loved every second of it: it was creative, fresh, catchy, and just downright brutal. You could sing, err, scream and growl along with the choruses and you felt like you could smash your way through a brick wall.

For years afterward, as my metal album collection grew, I'd periodically try to find out whatever happened to Cutthroat. I'm still searching; it seems like a few years later they just sort of disappeared. Apparently they put out two more albums, one in 1998 and another in 2000, but I've never been able to find them anywhere, nor find out what became of the band itself.

I pulled the album out last night and again, I'm just loving it. It's still one of my favorite metal albums of all time. Metal for me is intensely therapeutic - a better term might be calming though, as it serves to diffuse my pent-up frustration, rather than do anything to actually remove the source. I crank up the volume, bang my head a bit, sometimes try (mostly pathetically poorly) to yell along, get myself into a semi-hyper invincibility mood, look around for somebody to rip to shreds, and by the end of the album I feel better.

It's probably not the heathiest way to deal with anger and frustration, but certainly there are unhealthier ways, and what the hell, it works for me.