Riding The Clutch

Q: What does Clutch Blast Tyrant have in common with Sgt Peppers, Ziggy Stardust and Pet Sounds?

A: It is known by a truncated version of its full title. The full title is Blast Tyrant Atlas of the Invisible World with Illustrations of Strange Beasts and Phantoms*

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Welcome to the groovy lounge readers. Released in 2004 Blast Tyrant seems to be a lot of fans’ favourite spawn of Clutch, fittingly it was first recommended to me by a dude at one of their gigs. I got it for Christmas three years ago now and it has taken a goodly long time to unravel itself into my lap and purr, but it certainly does now.

Almost everything that is holy, hot and horny-handed about Clutch is represented right here, wrapped up in a great package and served up righteous and tight-eous for the discerning psychic earth rocker.

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Please allow me to adjust my pants
So that I may dance the good time dance
And put the onlookers and innocent bystanders into a trance

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You don’t get a full track-by-track here, Blast Tyrant isn’t that sort of LP; it is all about impressions, moments and the whole. There’s plenty of Clutch’s patented heavy-HEAVY-groove rock, wild shibboleths of D&D imagery, some political anger, some odd emotional dioramas, a good dollop of strange and a mean swipe at Bono. All of this phantasmagorical smorgasbord is unreservedly recommended by me.

Today’s favourite track is the decidedly, wonderfully feminist ‘(Notes From The Trial Of) La Curandera’**. Essentially it’s a witch trial set to music as the female shaman/folk healer is grilled prior to, umm, being grilled. It rocks hard as the band cast their spell and even adds some Jon Lord-style organ into the mix late on, to great affect.

Today’s other favourite track is the awesome high plains driftin’ ‘The Regulator’. Clutch conjured a superb western-in-a-song here and it features their best playing on the LP. Geek that I am it makes me think of Fallout 3^. It absolutely hits an emotional spot too. The acoustic version also included here, sways strangely close to Alannah Myles ‘Black Velvet’, which is not a problem.

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Hey Canadians, you’ve got some new folks wanting to move in! Check out the lyrics to, the superb, ‘The Mob Goes Wild’ and the disgust at the casual way the US government treated their own military deaths:

Everybody move to Canada and smoke lots of pot.
Everybody move to Canada right now. Here's how we do it:
Bum rush the border guard before he and his dog ever knew it.

Way before it was legal up there in yonder snowy wastelands, the man is a prophet.

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All manner of great stuff scattered hither and yon throughout Blast Tyrant, almost too much to mention. Throughout the band just groove on, never mind how heavy or out there the songs and lyrics are, the rhythm section just swing, real credit to Jean-Paul Gaster and Dan Maines because that is the real secret of the band’s sound.

Fallon’s lyrics are as strange and superb as ever, spinning his yarns both straight-ahead and surreal, I love him. Take ‘Army Of Bono’ which I interpret as a hefty swing at the righteous popkind, lots of references to an ‘Irish fly’ but it is open to interpretation, folks debate whether it may even be pro-Bono^^. I love the way very little is signed, sealed and delivered and you have to do your own headwork here. Good luck with the lyrics to ‘The Swollen Goat (In The Wake Of)’.

There is sooo much packed into the spiral scratches of Blast Tyrant, it’s almost criminal; too much man, too too much! The funky War-isms of ‘Cypress Grove’^* is almost too much to bear without levitating, chuck in the debauchery rejecting (?) ‘Promoter Of Earthbound Causes’, the wolf howls in ‘Worm Drink’ and the mythological tailspin of ‘Mercury’ and … I haven’t touched half of it.

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Cooled down my temper, tried to remember
What it was I wasn't to lose
And I probably could were it not for
The beer and the broads and the broads and the booze

Blast Tyrant is almost overwhelmingly good in short blasts and goodly overwhelming in long blasts. I have been riding it for three years now and I hear new things every single time I spin it.

As always Clutch simply do not sound like anyone else and in this day and age that level of originality and intelligence is a pretty unique achievement. You classify and dissect them at your own peril. As I continue my journey backwards through their discography, deliberately slowly to prolong the joy, I wonder what other delights await me.

I really cannot think of a better band still out there today.

I cause eclipses with a wave of the hand.
Let them hang in ellipses and do it all again.

1060 Down (with illustrations of strange beasts and phantoms).

PS: Because I like you, combining two of my very favourite things in one video.

*the others being, as you well know, Beatles Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, David Bowie The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars and Beach Boys We Wanted To Call This Platter Of Overrated Ditties ‘Wet Sounds’ But Our Record Company Said That Sounded A Bit Too Toilet-y So Pet Sounds Will Just Have To Do. True story.

**Clutch, Crom bless ’em, later released an EP in aid of breast cancer awareness, on pink vinyl, collecting songs featuring all their female protagonists called La Cuandera.

^which 4 years after Blast Tyrant featured a faction of duster wearing enforcers called regulators.

^^pun intended.

^*not many other songs I know reference Holy Diver, repeatedly.