Why will people review the new Clutch
album telling you it is awesome?
Why? I'll tell you why. The last track on the album, is the BEST TRACK on the album.
Coincidentally it is the longest, but this beauty will
more than likely be the last that a reviewer or blogger will hear
and give them a skewed perspective. I too have been guilty of this in
the past, I may have gone haywire when I heard the last track
'Centric Flow' by Obscura on Cosmogenesis. The walls were
painted with figurative spaff. The album turned out to be a belter
anyway, but the mind-game was there. Beware!
So to the rest of Earth Rocker.
What it lacks in catchy songs, it makes up for with a raw rocking
energy. Free range rock-n-roll unlike the battery farmed shite that
pollutes the airwaves like Biffy Clyro, 30 Seconds To Mars and other
such ball ache. Your average Clutch fan will turn the inside of their
undies white at the sound of such amazing songs as 'Crucial
Velocity'.
There is an inevitable slow and melancholy song on the album a la 'Regulator', but 'Gone Cold' isn't there as a filler. It is a heart felt, stripped down and intimate moment with the band and definitely one to cherish. It absorbs you so much you almost forget the rocking antics of the first half.
The finale 'The Wolf Man Kindly Requests...', apart from having that effortlessly cool title, is a testament to the new ideas that come into the fray here on Earth Rocker. From the cheek wobbling antics of the title track at the beginning to the sudden change of tempo and pulsing heaviness in the aforementioned last song, its shows Clutch are not phased by the challenge of creating something fresh.
I have been soul-searching, racking my
brain, trying to figure out why this record just comes short of top
dollar, 10/10. Which according the cheese-merchants in Hollywood,
involves staring across beautiful sunset lake scenes or
introspectively looking out a window into pouring rain. It may be due to songs like 'Oh, Isabella' which is a fleeting moment of weakness. Clutch do
have the gritty edge, but the beards, the hooks and the attitude may
attract assholes, getting in on this slice of accessible underground
while its still fresh is the key boys and girls.
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