You may or may not know this. Most times (and nearly every time when you’re doing a “big” album) when you get sent a review copy, there’s a biography so you can look intelligent and like you know loads about every band you write about (if that were true, this website would only be about early Bon Jovi, The Quireboys, The Almighty, The Wildhearts and The Backyard Babies).
They sent one with “Sunrise On Slaughter Beach”. I had a little skim read. A line caught my eye [their capitals] “To love CLUTCH is to feel a sense of ownership, membership, and belonging.”
And that, right there, I why I hate reviewing Clutch records.
Rewind to January 22nd 2006. I’d gone to watch Corrosion of Conformity at Rock City in Nottingham. It was a Sunday night. The middle band on this three band bill was a band that I knew one song of at the time. They were sensational. They were Clutch. I’ve adored them ever since.
But even with my almost 17 years’ service, I still feel like a Johnny Come Lately, a newbie. Someone who shouldn’t be expressing an opinion on Neil Fallon and the lads for fear that someone says “ahhh yes, but what about that EP they stuck out in 1991, what about the nuance and the chord sequence?” And probably strokes a beard and/or sucks a thoughtful tooth.
However, not only is this my website, I am paying for it and can say what I like, but also there’s this: You can put 1000 Clutch fans in a room and they’d all have 1000 different answers as to why this was brilliant. But at the end of the day we’d all agree it was brilliant.
Even for Clutch record there’s some weird turns on this, mind you. “Red Alert (Boss Metal Zone)” even has some odd prog things at the start and in the middle. That all being said: it could only be Clutch. Theirs is a unique groove and no one uses words like Fallon. No one ever will. “The greatest science fiction writer in the world? You’re looking at him!” He offers here for reasons that are slightly unclear.
It’s an opening from the “X-Ray Visions” realm though, and it’s followed by the de facto title track. A heavier blues thing. One of those Clutch tunes where they’ve got a hook you don’t know has wormed its way in until you find yourself merrily singing “economic casualties, my blue blooded freaks” to your baby niece in her high chair because it’s amusing her (this might have happened a couple of days ago). It too has a strange ambient thing. No one knows why. But it does perhaps point to the fact that this one isn’t the most immediate of Clutch collections. Even the most die hard of the diehards might need to give this a couple of goes – even if they’ll all be @ing me at 1 minute past midnight on Friday to tell me I am wrong.
“Mountain Of Bone” is a return to the old school, in a way, “Nosferatu Madre” is one of the most “metal” sounding things in their recent canon. This is Dan Maines’ moment. His bass anchors it down like it wants to be in “Holy Diver” or something. It’s quite superb.
There’s just a sixth sense here, I guess. The four of them have been together longer than most marriages. They just know what’s required. Tim Sult is one of the most underrated guitarists around and in “Mercy Brown” he plays a blinder. A poetic, horror story and with disconcerting synths to match – its exactly what I was getting at when I said this wasn’t the easiest Clutch record to like. It’s only when you’ve lived with these songs for a couple of weeks (which I’ve been privileged to do) that you feel their majesty fully.
Saying that. If you love Clutch (and we’re 650 words into a review of a fairly short album so I am assuming you do) get yourself to “We Strive For Excellence”. It’s a beauty. It’s a pedal to the metal, “salute the denim” thing that Fallon will be doing his odd dance to, and you will be screaming “the dinner bell ain’t calling me home” at some point when you see them live, because they are playing this in their shows or else I really know nothing.
“Skeletons On Mars” is another of the strange ones. Buzzsaw guitars hum and there’s that Philip K. Dick type of dystopian sci-fi going on, and then we get to my personal favourite on the album. Because it’s so crazy and yet it’s so perfectly Clutch. “Jazz music corrupts our youth” sings Fallon as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. You have to be on a slightly higher plain to the rest of us to do this, you really do.
There’s only nine songs here, but each has its own plot and connecting threads. All except that is “Jackhammer Our Names”, the closing statement, on which Fallon goes full on Nick Cave and reckons “we have all the time in the world to forget what we’ve done” while he’s about it.
So, dear reader, we’ve done 900 words together (and if you’ve stuck with this, thanks, its longer than a dissertation) and how do we sum “Sunrise On Slaughter Beach” up? The answer is we’re not going to. Neil Fallon is, because there’s a line on “Skeletons On Mars” which nails in seven words what I’ve been floundering for: “Strangely familiar, yet not familiar at all”.
That’s my take. You can have yours. The only consensus view though is this: There’s no one like Clutch though, and that is a fact.
Rating 9/10
