US Riff Factory Clutch On Their Return To Australia In 2027

US riff factory Clutch return to Australia in early 2027 for their first headline tour in a decade, bringing with them fellow riff lords Corrosion Of Conformity for what will be one of the year’s biggest concentrations of groove and pure power. For more than thirty years, Clutch have stood apart from everyone else and carved out a sound entirely their own. Throwing hard rock, blues, stoner rock and classic metal into a melting pot, they have built a fiercely loyal global following through relentless touring, thunderous live performances and catalogue that is constantly evolving and refuses to stand still.

By the time they arrive in January, Clutch will also be armed with a brand new studio album, their fourteenth, and their first since 2022’s acclaimed, Sunrise On Slaughter Beach. Wasted Lands continues a career that has firmly established Clutch as one of heavy music’s most respected and enduring acts, and they are definitely one of your favourite bands, favourite bands. Appearing at Adelaide’s Froth & Fury Festival, these headline shows give Australian fans the opportunity to experience two of heavy music’s most influential acts on the same stage for a night of crushing riffs, huge grooves and world-class songs. Neil Fallon talks to Rob Lyon about the tour.

It definitely feels so long in between drinks?
I had to actually look it up to see when it was we were there, and it’s been, you know, ten years… well, about ten years.

Wow! A lot’s happened in ten years, so it feels like quite a bit of catching up to do with fans.
Yeah, we’ve had several albums come out, and we’ll do what we can to cram as much as we can into these set lists.

One of the highlights for Clutch on this upcoming tour is playing Froth and Fury in Adelaide?
Festivals are always fun, and I don’t know how long that Froth and Fury has been going on, but it sounds like a blast. I mean… it’s rock and roll and beer are really well within our wheelhouse.

Absolutely, does the approach change much between your own shows and festivals?
It really depends, I mean, like, a lot of festivals, we get very short sets, like half an hour so we just rely on playing our hits, for lack of a better word, whereas if it’s your own show, the fan base knows your discography a lot better, and you can play some outliers in your setlist, or older songs that maybe folks don’t hear too often. But I would imagine, I don’t know how long our set is going to be, but we’ll probably try to check as many boxes as we can. At festivals, you’re being exposed to a lot of new people. So it’s… you want to play songs that they might have heard in passing. But at the same time, you’re probably going to have die‑hard fans there, so you don’t want to patronise anyone, you try to thread that needle.

When you haven’t toured for quite as long, do you notice that generational shift in the supporter base with a lot of younger fans following the band, that must be the real silver lining particularly at Froth & Fury here in Adelaide, of younger fans will be seeing Clutch for the first time. That must keep it fresh and exciting for yourselves as well?
It is, we’ve been doing this thirty five years, and when I see someone who more or less kind of looks like it might even be their first concert, let alone their first Clutch concert, you can live vicariously through that excitement. I know there’s people that might have been too young to see us even on our most recent record, for whatever reason. Festivals, you get a younger crowd because it’s more accessible than a nightclub that might have a drinking age limit or something like that.

As each year rolls past, do you start to get a little bit worried that that return might be just hard, especially when you look at the complexities of touring nowadays, and the cost for bands, which is insane. Did that weigh on your mind at all, or was it just a matter of waiting for the stars to align and the right opportunity, and you’d be here?
Yeah, that was more of that. I mean, between now and if COVID hadn’t been a thing, I’m sure we probably would have been there quicker than ten years and we also lost our manager. There was a series of troubles and headwinds for us, and not just us, other bands as well. It is expensive. Anytime we go to Europe or to Australia, it’s much more expensive than just getting in the bus here in the States. But at the same time, it’s like, well… the fans there are just as eager to hear the music, and that’s the relationship that I think keeps things going, going to a new place, meeting new people who sing along to the words you wrote in your basement twenty years ago. I never, ever tire of that.

Next year’s going to be a big year with a new album. Touring on a new album, that’s going to be exciting as well?
It is. We’re going to be touring on that album for quite some time, and it just so happens that we had already been booked to play Australia, and then we recorded the album and looked at when we could release it, and then it just kind of happened, like you said, the stars aligned at that time. Hopefully it won’t take another ten years for us to get back. I mean, I looked at 2016, and we had actually been there also just two years prior to that, and then four years prior to that one, we did Soundwave, so there was a period of time when we were hitting it pretty regularly.

In terms of the new album, how would you describe it compared to what we already know and love about Clutch?
Well, I think it’s a straight‑up meat and potatoes rock and roll record. There’s no jazz odysseys to speak of. We worked with Machine, and he’s done some of our most popular records, whether it be Blast Tyrant, or Earth Rocker, or Psychic Warfare, so he has a bit of a signature sound on those records that you will hear on this one as well. It’s faster than Sunrise on Slaughter Beach and not aggressive in that way, but it’s just kind of more of an up‑tempo, I think.

So what drives this sort of progression? Is it just the way that it evolves, or is it just getting better at what you do? Does anything in particular influence that at all?
When you’re in a band like Clutch, we’re a democracy, and we’re sort of a hive mind. It’d be one thing if there was one person in the band who said, okay, here are the ten songs we’re going to record, and I have this vision. It might be easier to answer if that were the case, but sometimes you have to be very patient for these four brains to kind of gel and have that aha moment. We did a whole batch of songs for this record, and we liked it, but when we listened to it, we realised it sounded good on headphones, but it probably wouldn’t be that exciting live on stage. That’s what we do, and I think that’s our strength. Sure, you can indulge yourself every once in a while with more experimental things, but to this day, even if it’s a theatre or a big venue, it’s still got a bar‑room energy to it. I think we had to get through some stuff, get it out of our system, and then keep writing and writing. For every one song that makes a record, there’s ten that end up in the garbage can. It’s easy to write your first record, but when you start reaching record number fourteen, fifteen, you got to dig a little deeper.

When you have that aha moment, as you described it, is that where the real excitement is? Once it all gels together and it feels like it’s clicking together and starts taking shape?
Yeah, I want to suffer another automotive analogy, but it’s like getting into gear. You could have false starts, your engine could stall, you could grind the gears, but once you get the momentum, and I guess that’s probably the word I’m looking for, you can get a creative momentum going. With us, we don’t really speak about it too much. We might say we don’t want to do this or don’t do that, but we have to actually play the music, and then we’ll usually realise when we’re together, we’ll kind of look at each other and say, oh, that was a cool thing. Let’s do it four times and call it a part and see where that gets us.

You mentioned thirty five years as a band. That’s a significant milestone in anyone’s language, let alone when you look at a lot of bands that don’t even last that long. What’s been the secret for Clutch in terms of keeping it together, thriving and still prospering?
I think, first and foremost, love of the music and enjoying playing live. In the 90s, we would get signed to a label and then get dropped, and a lot of times that would happen to bands and they would break up because they thought that was a sign of failure. But we just kept going, we would go back into the van and keep grinding it out. Starting our own record label was huge for us, because we were able to call the shots, and if something went wrong, we knew who to blame. We couldn’t pass the buck. I think also having a sense of humour about it, you can’t take yourself too seriously, you got to be able to laugh at yourself. But again, if someone goes into this with the intention of fame and fortune, I don’t think you’re really doing art, you’re doing marketing and great, if you can make a living as we’ve done it, it’s incredible. That, to me, is the reward, being able to do something creative for a living. I think the older I get, the more I appreciate that. In my 20s, I might have taken that for granted, but I certainly look back now and say that’s a really rare thing to be able to say, and I’m very grateful for it.

The thing I love about Clutch is that you’re continually moving forward, and it’s not necessarily all about nostalgia and looking back?
I think most creatives that I know, it’s always about the next thing. There’s never any moment where you say, oh, I’ve arrived, I’ve made it. There’s always some kind of curiosity about what’s next and it’s important to play to your strengths. We are who we are, and it’s always going to sound like Clutch because it’s the same four knuckleheads for thirty five years. So yeah, the creative spirit is always… I’d rather do something new and fail than kind of wash and repeat. That, to me, would drive me crazy.

If you had your time over, that you’d do different?
I would maybe… the first ten years of this band, I probably would have taken it a little more seriously instead of thinking, this is what I’m going to do before I get a real job. Which was my attitude maybe for the first ten years, like, okay, this is fun, but expecting it to end at any moment. You know, that was kind of dumb, but I can only say that because of hindsight. The other thing I would do is I would write everything down. I would have been much more religious about keeping a journal, because it does become a blur. I mean, even this last tour we finished yesterday, and I couldn’t hardly tell you where we were.

What is it that you love about Australia, and what is it about Australia that keeps you coming back?
I love the kind of take‑the‑bull‑by‑the‑horns attitude about enjoying life, whether it be as simple as… it’s very outdoors. The party atmosphere kind of reminds me of Texas in a way, in some regards. It’s got a very… I don’t know what the right word is… a lot of vigour, you know, and I could probably think of many other words, but I like just the attitude of it and the sense of humour as well, I think Australians have a wonderful sense of humour, and very good breakfast.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Clutch on the following tour dates, tickets from Teamwrk Touring…

In Adelaide at Froth & Fury, tickets HERE…