A pretty balmy night in Nottingham had the heat turned up a notch or three by Maryland’s finest purveyors of pure rock fury. Neil Fallon and his band of hard-edged blues rockers hit Rock City on the back of their stunning Earth Rocker album.
First up; GENERAL kicked off proceedings. With a frontman who looks like he’s been out surfing all afternoon but a band full of suitably metal looking fellas; you might just wonder what they’re going to sound like. Pleasingly they turn out a great doom ridden and sludgey dirge which is pierced wonderfully by some powerful rock vocals.
SONS OF ICARUS followed on and did another splendid job of warming up the crowd. Straight ahead hard rock is their game and they play it well.
It’s CLUTCH that everyone came to see though, and at just past nine, Germantown’s no nonsense rock’n’rollers strutted out. Jeans and T-shirts is the standard uniform, there are not many bells and whistles when it comes to a Clutch show…apart from the cowbell, obviously. They don’t need an outlandish image to hide behind as they’ve got a plethora of raging tunes, but it also helps that Neil Fallon is both charismatic and a whirlwind of action onstage.
All the fist-pumping, pointing and associated hand gestures pale to the power of the voice though. It seems impossible how a whole room full of sweaty bodies can boogie and dance away to such a harsh vocal barrage; but for every ounce of bile in the vocals there’s an equal measure of soul to balance it out. When you add in the mixture of beasty riffs and swinging blues, you have a party on your hands.
The set is very heavy on new material from ‘Earth Rocker’ which is hardly a problem; their latest album is arguably their best yet. It is the sharp punch of the title track that opens up the show closely followed by ‘Mr Freedom’ and then the cowbell comes out for a slightly more laid back jam of ‘D.C. Sound Attack’. A break from the latest album comes with ‘Subtle Hustle’ and later with ‘The Mob Goes Wild’, but it quickly becomes obvious that Clutch is here to show off their newest wares.
The highlight of the set comes from said album. The soaring riff of ‘Unto the Breach’ gets the crowd moving before ‘Gone Cold’ slows things down to a country swagger; an awesome duo of songs, demonstrating just how good Clutch are a full speed and when just ticking over. An older favourite of ‘Electric Worry’ comes out towards the end of the main set to get everyone dancing again.
By my calculations that was all of ‘Earth Rocker’ bar one song. Did it dampen spirits? Not at all, it is an album that needs to be aired as much as possible. By the time they return for a short encore, you can see steam rising off people’s heads and sweat dripping down the walls of Rock City. All in all, pretty successful night then. Clutch managed to turn a hot night into an incendiary one.
Words & Pics: Rob W
