Just like that, it’s that time to squeeze in our final shows of the year and who better to send us off than the almighty Clutch, back again at Manchester’s Academy 1 to help lead us into the holiday season with a bit of groove in our step. Bringing along two fantastic supports in the form of Bokassa and 1000Mods.
Norway’s Bokassa are our first band of the night and their shotgun blast of groovy punk attitude is the perfect start to proceedings. Frontman Jørn Kaarstad’s cheeky grin as he explains how he loves the challenge of winning over a crowd when starting on the back foot would explain the questionable choice of Liverpool FC kit as their stage attire. But honestly it doesn’t take much convincing, the band are an entertainingly odd mix of whatever they want to be, throwing out tracks that fluctuate between fast and furious to melodic stoner vibes that wrap up in a round of catchy sing-along choruses. But with song titles like ‘Molovtov Rocktail’ and ‘Immortal Space Pirate (The Stoner Anthem)’ the band clearly approach their art with tongue placed firmly in cheek and it clearly works very well. The crowd is obviously strongly vibing with it and a few pits even start early on.
Back in the UK for a second go around this year are Greek heavy rockers 1000Mods, following a short tour back in February that we are gutted to have missed based off of tonight’s showing.
The band wastes no time in setting us off on a journey through a set that’s set up like the perfect mixtape soundtrack to a rolling desert roadtrip. Opener ‘Electric Carve’ is a full throttle rock and roll track to set us off in style whilst ‘Road to Burn’ sees the band leaning more towards doomier / stoner stylings with long hypnotic bass notes that reverberate under melodic guitar lines and solos. A slight disturbance in the crowd unfortunately pumps the brakes on the set a little towards the end but the band are quick to get things back up to speed again once everything’s sorted with ‘Vidage’, another epic tome of a track that revels in its main riff, making sure you’ll be singing it long after you leave tonight.
After that good shake up it’s finally time for our headliners Clutch to take the stage. There’s a forever welcome sense of openness to a Clutch performance, with the stage cleared almost completely of excess leaving the performance room to breathe as guitarists Tim Sult and Dain Maines take position either side of drummer Jean-Paul Gaster leading us into a short instrumental intro.
As soon as vocalist Neil Fallon hits the stage though we’re off to the races, once vacant the mic stand is swiftly evicted from view ensuring Fallon has full use of every last inch of stage to perform his particular form of stagecraft. Grand gestures and wild hand movements abound as Fallon prowls from one side of the stage to the other in his particular magnetic style.
Clutch always manage to pack an incomparable amount of songs into their finely crafted sets and 18 tracks of pure, groovy rock and roll goodness appear to be our early holiday treat tonight. I’m admittedly less familiar with this iteration of the setlist than the previous times I’ve seen them but the nightly re-arrangement of the set always brings with it that wonderful sense of discovery.
Starting us out with a with a career spanning selection of songs, ‘Nosferatu Madre’ and ‘Slaughter Beach’ from the band’s latest release bookmark the catalogue deep dive with ‘Walking in the Great Shining Path of Monster Trucks’ pulled from the band’s debut album ‘Transnational Speedway League’. We get a brief early tease from the epic ‘Blast Tyrant’ with ‘Worm Drink’ before we head into what is arguably my blind spot of the set. For reasons unknown to me I am not yet familiar with the band’s self titled effort so when we are treated to a helping of ‘Big News I’, ‘Big News II’ and ‘Escape From The Prison Planet’ I take the opportunity to sit back and relax with the slightly more tempered, precise pace of this triple header. But just as soon as we’ve finished vibing to the spacey groove of Prison Planet that unmistakable scorcher of an opening riff hits as we proceed to the dance portion of the night. ‘The Mob Goes Wild’ never fails to set a crowd going and this quickly followed up by The Psychic Warfare double header of ‘X-Ray Vision’ and ‘Firebirds’ is a blast of energy that leads to the loudest sing-a-longs of the night.
It’s always a personal pleasure seeing ‘Burning Beard’ (my introduction to the crazy world of Clutch) given a place on the setlist and of course rounding things out we have the unbeatable ‘Electric Worry’ which the crowd react to with the utmost enthusiasm paired with an equally bouncy cover version of CCR’s ‘Fortunate Son’. It never ceases to amaze watching a masterclass that is a Clutch show and hopefully it’s not too long before we get to do it again.
All images by William Mawdsley | Instagram