Biography from Last.fm
Clutch is an American rock band from Frederick, Maryland, originating in Germantown, Maryland. Its four members met while in high school in Germantown and consider themselves a Frederick-based band where they write/rehearse for every album/tour.
Since its formation in 1991, the band line-up has included Neil Fallon (vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards), Tim Sult (lead guitar, backing vocals), Dan Maines (bass, backing vocals) and Jean-Paul Gaster (drums and percussion). Read more on Last.fm
Clutch are the archetypal band-that-nobody-has-a-bad-word-to-say-about. Go on. Try. You can’t think of one. At least not a honest one. See? Our man Gary Wolstenholme went on down to the Manchester Academy with his camera to capture Neil Fallon and co doing what they do best: being great.
With Black Sabbath, Soundgarden, Faith No More, Motörhead and Soulfly (and Wolfmother…) set to fill the main stage of a day at British Summer Time festival in Hyde Park this July, it struck Raziq Rauf that the same bill could easily have been announced in 2000 to the same fanfare. What has (or has not) happened in the last 14 years for this to be the case and what does the future have in store?
What is the future of music festivals? I’m not talking 2015 (because 2014’s summer season lineup is just about fully lined up), I’m talking about something more like 2025. What is going to happen to our music festivals in the next ten years? Will Metallica still be headlining on a rota with Slipknot, Iron Maiden and Linkin Park? The classic rockers like Aerosmith, Def Leppard and Black Sabbath have a shelf-life. Are Avenged Sevenfold or Rammstein the answer? While they sell out arenas in London and that simply translates to headlining Donington or Knebworth, neither have ever had quite the same impact as those first mentioned few and they likely never will.
This week, the magnificent Temples Festival sold out of weekend tickets. For a new festival to do this in their opening year is pretty damn impressive, and speaks volumes for just how strong Temples Festival’s line-up curation has been. It also makes for a goddamn murderously good Sunday Slaylist.
There are bands that go well with a drink, and then there are bands that turn even the lightest drinker into a nonstop, unapologetic booze machine. To have two bands of the latter kind on the same bill is kinda genius and also kinda dangerous. Our livers were quivering in fear when we set off for this one.
Six things we learned when Thin Lizzy and Clutch played in London
If you hadn’t realised, we like beer. We like drinking it. We like drinking new versions of it. We like talking about it. That’s why, when the mighty Clutch released their own beer, we thought we’d talk to singer, Neil Fallon about beer. Talking about beer is the second most enjoyable beer-related activity after drinking the lovely, lovely stuff, after all. Mmmm. Beer.
Neil Fallon tells us about his Top 6 beers:
Clutch are returning to the UK in January and February 2012 as they support Thin Lizzy. We figured we’d ask Neil Fallon some questions about being old.
We spent a couple of days in a park in London at the inaugural High Voltage Festival and aside from getting sunstroke, we saw some awesome stuff. Bands, mainly. We picked our top moments.
Best Air Guitar
High Voltage actually has an air guitar booth. While those of us from Thrash Hits don’t indulge ourselves (we don’t want to show anyone up, obviously. Particularly ourselves) the undoubted winner of the weekend in this particular category did his work on the Metal Hammer stage. Orange Goblin are on their usual storming form, ripping through their set of balls-out heavy metal with vim and vigour. Frontman Ben Ward is the star of the show, captivating your attention. And playing air guitar better than anyone else all weekend.
With all out “Download Festival this, Sonisphere Festival that, Oh look Reading & Leeds” blathering recently, we’ve really missed out on emphasising one fact about the upcoming UK festival season: that High Voltage Festival, frankly, looks like it’s going to piss all over everyone else. The fact that it was confirmed today that Opeth will be playing their only UK festival show of 2010 there merely cements that fact.
High Voltage is a brand new rock festival that’s coming to London in July 2010. Guess what. We’ve got two pairs of tickets to give away so that you can go for free! FREE!
We’d bet good money that you’ve never seen a live band better than Maryland rockers, Clutch. Don’t even pretend you know better. Which is why we sent Amit Sharma to corner drummer Jean-Paul Gaster when the band played in London last week..
Strange Cousins From The West sounds killer! How did you come up with the album title?
“It’s one of the lines out of the song ‘Minotaur’ – it seems like that’s one of the most difficult things for us to do: actually naming the album, we always struggle with that for some reason! Neil [Fallon, vocals] is usually best at that, he writes all the lyrics for the band (thankfully). We kicked around some ideas and that sort of struck a chord – it’s a real visual kinda thing and I think everyone’s probably got some strange cousins from the West!”