Clutch’s show at the Fillmore Auditorium on Wednesday featured none of the trappings of many older, larger hard-rock acts — and that was just fine. Photos by Mateo Leyba.
is heavy. Heavy enough to pull in all the roots of punk, metal, funk and grunge and bundle them into the perfect musical explosive. Their performance at last Wednesday proved it, as they pummeled a more than willing, near capacity audience with over 90 minutes of material from all over their musical history.
While they performed more than half of the new record, “Strange Cousins from the West,” they also delighted fans by dipping into their previous eight records as well, proving that their material has remained strong over their entire career, and continues to get better.
That history is as much about their fiercely loyal fans as it is about the band. Following in the footsteps of bands like Pearl Jam, Korn and others who shy away from the corporate side of the music business, Clutch has a sort of “guerilla” mentality about their music, in management, passion and content. Their independent stance — they’ve self-released their music since the late ‘90s — seems to have afforded them an almost cult status, and fans that seem ravenous for every release, but very little radio airplay.
The band makes up for airplay in touring, however, reportedly doing as many as 100 shows per year. Their stage show featured virtually none of the trappings of large, older acts — no extravagant light shows, acrobatics, or stage setup — just straight-up, funky and passionate rock n’ roll.
When frontman Neil Fallon screamed, it was anything but typical. He belted out songs with a voice that recalled all of the bluesy power of Robert Plant, peppered with a riotous style that Zack de la Rocha shakes on Rage fans, and more than a little Mike Watt mania, and we all knew we weren’t being serenaded so much as we were being schooled. All the while he traded licks with guitarist Tim Sult that bore more than a little southern-rock feel (a new tendency evident on their latest record) while bassist Dan Maines and drummer Jean-Paul Gaster built up the punk-funk-metal rhythms.
The result was a show that whipped the packed floor, and the rest of the venue, into a frenzy at times, full of fist-pumping, moshing revolutionaries — ready to follow Fallon towards any end, for any cause.
Fortunately, Clutch’s agenda seemed to be more one of the mind than of the fist, as they led wild singalongs through songs like “Abraham Lincoln,” (a song about deep anger with the assassination of our 16th president — and the cowardice of his assassin, John Wilkes Boothe), “10001110101” and “50,000 Unstoppable Watts,” (which — no pun intended, sounded more like a Mike Watt piece than probably any other part of the set).
As they closed the set with “Spacegrass” and “Electric Worry,” it seemed as if the crowd was just getting their second, or third, wind, ecstatic and anything but sated, ready to start all over again.
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Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer, an old-school punk and a huge follower of Denver’s vibrant local music scene. Follow Billy’s explorations at , and his giglist at .
Mateo Leyba is a photographer for The Denver Post and a regular contributor to Reverb.
More photos: Clutch
Opening act: Wino
