When you’ve been playing in the same band since high school with the same people and you’ve already got ten albums under your belt, I think it’s fair to assume that you probably know where you’re at and what you’re doing, and boy, do Clutch know what they’re doing?
There’s absolutely no fucking about on this record; no widdly widdly soloing, no bloated arrangements, no crowd-pleasing ballads, just pure bad ass rock, superbly executed with tight rhythms, hard hitting riffs and top drawer vocals.
‘The Affidavit’ opens with ambient noise recorded on Neil Fallon’s iPhone in a hotel lobby, as he takes the part of a private investigator interviewing the character from first track ‘X-Ray Visions’, a straight ahead uptempo hard-hitting rocker, which segues into the equally intense ‘Firebirds’. There’s plenty more in the same vein on ‘Sucker for the Witch’ and ‘Decapitation Blues’, which are both hard and hooky.
It’s not all hell-bent for leather mind, ‘A Quick Death in Texas’ has got serious groove and well worked riffs, while ‘Your Love is Incarceration’ is equally funky. In fact, there’s actually quite a lot of variety on ‘Psychic Warfare’, what with the downbeat movie soundtrack drama of ‘Our Lady of Electric Light’, the vaguely ridiculous and totally overblown ‘Behold the Colossus’ and the sinister storytelling of the hard grinding rocker ‘Son of Virginia’.
Although in my humble opinion, it’s hard to top the super-frenetic hard-assed rocker ‘Noble Savage’, which is an instant classic and sure to be a live favourite, there’s really not a duff track or a dull moment on this record; even the filler is killer.
4.5/5
‘Psychic Warfare’ by Clutch is out now on Weathermaker Records.
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Words by Edward Layland (@EdwardLayland)
