Clutch –Psychic Warfare

I’ve heard a lot about Clutch, but never have I gone out of my way to listen to them. This opportunity granted me the time and reason to do so, and one YouTuber – Towlietowel, says “they’re what Led Zeppelin would have sounded like if Frank Zappa was their front man instead of Robert Plant”. That line along sums up the sound perfectly, while their 11^th studio album Weathermaker fucks you in the ear without your consent, however you want to keep going back and ask for more.

The album starts off with a man in a baritone voice asking what was it that happened, be that to the band or to the listener, and then that’s when everything goes completely AWOL, almost like a man who bangs on about conspiracy theories before everything collapses around the character, from Fallon’s crazy vocals to the wild guitar solos of Tim Salt from the title track “Psychic Warfare”, and the devastatingly crushing rhythms in “Behold the Colossus” and – a personal favorite of mine from the album – “Decapitation Blues”, where it shows that it doesn’t take much for Fallon to pick something insane and out of the blue and makes it just rock out perfectly. The odd one out on the album is “Sons of Virginia”, where the slowth in speed and energy makes the finale almost anti-climactic as you wish for the energy to continue. On the bright side, it’s haunting. Not that that means it’s bright, but the blues side of Clutch cuts through, a lot better than “Our Lady of Electric Light” (let’s not forget that it still stands out as a slower number, yet it doesn’t contain that same magic). The album does end with the narrative of the man at the beginning, evidently confused with the tale spun, as he mentions what’s been said has been written down and he’ll see what he can do, adding a comedic layer as the outro.

Many sites say that compared to previous albums, Psychic Warfare lives up to the hype that Clutch is back, yet they never achieve what they’ve done in their golden days. But why should a band be defined by its past, unless everything it’s released after their greatest album has been utter garbage? That’s preposterous, and as a new listener to the band I’m hooked onto the album, half of the tracks are already on my Top 25 playlist for my ipod. Psychic Warfare kicks ass, Clutch kicks ass, and furthermore Weathermaker kicks a hell of a lot of ass, and I look forward to seeing what else may be on Clutch’s horizon.

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