‘List of People Buried at Arlington National Cemetery’ kicks things off with a bang, opening with emo/hardcore-style ranting delivery before morphing into the anti-folk territory of Defiance, Ohio. “I get so alone that I start to drink,” they shout, “I’m usually fine then I start to think / an atom bomb leaves nothing in its wake / do I survive for everyone’s sake?” The instrumentation is slightly off-kilter which, coupled with Lightning’s delivery, gives a sense of cathartic energy, as if the music is arriving to your ears unfiltered in its ferocity and strangeness.

“Purge me of my sins
now I’m friends with my demons
screaming, ‘it’s in my blood
it’s in my blood
it’s in my blood”
it’s in… ‘”

Sounding like Fugazi meets Young Jesus, ‘Wicked & Divine’ details slash-and-burn attempts to escape psychic pain, the ill-fated self-destruction-as-a-narcotic routine acting as a vicious circle from which respite can only be gained through further revolutions of the cycle. This self-aware entrapment triggers further feelings of self loathing and suffering, leading to further entrapment, then self-loathing, then entrapment etc. etc, so that while the narrator dreams of going back to reseed the charred ground, in reality they just keep on blazing the same earth over and over again.

“I can take the heat
Icarus got nothin’ on me
baby, we’ll burn out brilliantly
where’s the fun in fading out quietly?
As the sun melts our wings
your arms around me
I’ll kiss you goodbye as our bodies
plunge into the sea

It all starts out the same on Resolution Day
take me back to your room and say
‘kiss me, I want to feel right’
but I’m too busy getting high”

‘Fade to Black’ continues this idea (“The insanity of doing the same thing over and over til I collapse”) and, although the sound is more restrained, the sense of immediacy remains. A departure from the other two, the track unfurls into something akin to The Weakerthans meets Small Wonder, ending with a determined crescendo of militaristic drums that Titus Andronicus would be proud of.

“I started to tell you
you were in a dream I had
all our friends were in the backyard
everyone was wearing black
then right there you stopped me
you asked ‘did anyone have sex?’
I stammered ‘no I-I don’t think so.’
You sighed, ‘then keep it to yourself'”

With all this talk of pain and trauma and its inescapable bind, you might get the impression that this is a bleak record. The funny thing is, that couldn’t be further from the truth. What emerges in Lightning’s first lines (and in every word and note thereafter) is that the music is the very thing to break the Kekuléan knot they had gotten lost in. Survival punk is not a creative descriptor so much as an ethos, a way of life. CUTTERS exists so that it’s band members feel more alive. How can that be bleak? Bleak would be to sing happy songs about Hollywood love stories you could never believe. Bleak would be to say nothing at all.

As brief as it is brilliant, both//neither ends just as you get hooked, leaving you thrilled and short-changed and baying for more, like some musical equivalent of the best episodes of Lost. This feels like the beginning of something, so let’s sit and wait patiently.

You can buy both//neither now from the CUTTERS Bandcamp page, or grab a vinyl from Jam Eater Records.

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