Cutthroat “The Purge” EP Review By: Jorge Pozo

Aug 11, 2026

Los Angeles has always been fertile, dangerous ground for hardcore, a city whose sun-bleached sprawl conceals a genuine undercurrent of menace. Out of that churning underground came Cutthroat, the four-piece assembled in 2013 by founder and frontman Neil Roemer, a band that has spent more than a decade earning its reputation the hard way. Through relentless international touring and support slots beneath Biohazard, Body Count, Agnostic Front, Madball, Sick of It All, Destruction, and even the immortal Judas Priest, they have forged themselves into a road-tested machine built for the pit.

With two full-lengths already behind them, the Billy Graziadei-produced Reflekt in 2020 and the darker, meaner Fear by Design in 2023, the band could have simply repeated the formula. Instead, roughly three years on, The Purge arrives as an unmistakable inflection point. A new home at M-Theory Audio, a quiet decision to shed the “LA” from their name, and a leaner, hungrier collection of songs all signal a group consciously stepping up in weight class, precisely as Roemer promises when he vows the band will “operate on a higher level.”

Part of what makes this new chapter compelling is the sheer improbability of the lineup itself. Roemer anchors the operation from California, while Renato Romano on guitar and Betto Cardoso on drums are seasoned veterans of the São Paulo scene, with Bruno Nicolozzi rounding out the low end on bass. This is a transcontinental unit that convenes only days before a tour, hammers out its rehearsals, and then detonates on stage. That such a scattered arrangement produces music this tight speaks volumes about the professionalism and shared hunger driving the band.

Sonically, The Purge is steeped in the DNA of ’90s metallic hardcore, that golden, gloriously ugly era when crossover thrash, hip-hop groove, and pure street aggression collided. The production is exactly right for the material: chunky midrange guitars, pulsing bass, thunderous gang shouts, and a bone-dry snarl that never sacrifices organic grit for sterile polish. Fans who came up worshipping the groundbreaking records of that period will feel an immediate, visceral recognition coursing through every chugging riff and every two-step breakdown across these five tracks.

At the center of the maelstrom stands Neil Roemer, a frontman whose voice carries the sneering authority of the tradition he clearly reveres. His delivery recalls the grit of prime Evan Seinfeld and the streetwise bark of Freddie Cricien, yet he is no mere imitator. Roemer has openly admitted that this current lineup pushed him to dig deeper and stretch his range, and the results are audible, from confrontational barks to a slippery, hip-hop-inflected cadence that lends the material an unpredictable rhythmic bounce and a real sense of personality.

Behind him, Betto Cardoso supplies the physical force that gives the EP its terrifying momentum. His drumming is a study in controlled violence, launching from mid-tempo grooves into double-bass gallops and thrash-driven flurries without ever losing the pocket. Alongside Renato Romano, whose riff work bristles with triplet-picked palm mutes, snaking proto-thrash figures, and the occasional squeal of whammy-bar abandon, the rhythm section builds a foundation that is as danceable as it is punishing, groove and brutality held in perfect tension.

The assault opens with Hard Times, arguably the strongest cut on offer, which announces itself with a declarative spoken-word intro before a feedback-drenched groove erupts into a furious double-time verse. Its frustration is aimed squarely at economic pressure, social division, and the grinding exhaustion of modern life, and the well-chosen sample from Taxi Driver deepens the paranoid, city-at-night atmosphere. The mid-tempo gang-vocal chorus is tailor-made for a room full of sweat-soaked bodies moving as one.

From there, Sick One snarls to life around a proto-thrash riff that chugs and snakes into another breakneck verse and a bouncing, call-and-response chorus practically engineered for crowd participation. The metallic element grows more pronounced here, with Cardoso’s gallops and Romano’s triplet picking pushing the track toward outright thrash. Feeling Disconnected then slows the pace to a menacing trudge, its bleak meditation on emotional burnout and fractured relationships underscored by a haunting sample lifted from Requiem for a Dream.

The title track, Purge, is where the band’s ambitions crystallize most thrillingly. Heavy breakdowns collide with d-beat urgency and double-kick fury, while Roemer leans hardest into his hip-hop-influenced phrasing over deceptively bouncy riffs. It is little wonder the band chose this song to lead the campaign with a music video, as it distills everything Cutthroat does well into a single volatile package. Closer Bullet Proof Mind caps the record with pounding toms and that now-signature strategy of grooving hard, snapping into double time, and grooving hard again.

What elevates The Purge above a simple genre exercise is its cinematic sensibility. The recurring film samples, drawn from psychological-crime touchstones like Taxi Driver, Joker, and Requiem for a Dream, are not lazy window dressing but deliberate atmospheric anchors, threading the songs together into a single bleak commentary on alienation, social decay, and the raw survival instinct required to endure them. It grants the EP a conceptual identity and a grim thematic weight that many of its crossover peers rarely bother to chase.

Crucially, The Purge functions as a bridge as much as a destination. Roemer has spoken of a heavier third album already in the works, one promising an even wider range of vocal runs and guttural growls, and this EP reads clearly as the opening salvo of that evolution. It is the sound of a band tightening every bolt, sharpening every edge, and gathering momentum before a much larger leap, and that sense of coiled potential lends these five songs an urgent forward propulsion.

If there is a limitation, it is simply one of scope. At barely a quarter-hour, The Purge is a lean, concentrated jolt rather than a sprawling statement, and it operates comfortably within a well-established lineage rather than rewriting it. Yet that focus is arguably its greatest strength. There is not an ounce of fat here, no wasted motion, only a hard-hitting, purpose-built romp through the harsh realities of contemporary life and the defiance required to overcome them.

In conclusion, The Purge is a confident, ferocious, and admirably focused release that finds Cutthroat entering their most promising era to date. It honors the golden age of metallic hardcore while injecting enough thrash muscle and cinematic ambition to feel vital rather than nostalgic. As a declaration of intent from a band on the cusp of something bigger, it succeeds emphatically, and it leaves little doubt that Roemer means every word when he insists the best is still to come.

My personal favorite tracks are the incendiary opener Hard Times and the volatile title track Purge, the two moments where the band’s groove, aggression, and conceptual vision align most powerfully. I was also struck by the striking cover art, its masked figures set against a burning skyline wreathed in purple smoke, a perfect visual analogue to the music’s urban dread. With the Purge The World Tour already tearing across Europe alongside thrash legends Vio-Lence, Cutthroat appear more than ready to make good on their considerable promise.

Pre-save The Purge here: https://cutthroatla.bandcamp.com/album/the-purge-ep

Rating: 8/10