Acts: Clutch (support: Green Lung, Tigercub)
Venue: Zagreb / Tvornica kulture / Croatia
Date: Friday, 25 November 2022
It’s more than clear that Clutch have been granted full citizenship in Croatia in recent years. Their new and overall third visit to a Tvornica kulture that has sold out for the third time running confirmed it beyond any doubt. The iconic American stoner rock institution from Maryland returned to Europe with their thirteenth studio album “Sunrise On Slaughter Beach,” which brings a string of recognizable hard-hitting firepower in the new tracks Red Alert (Boss Metal Zone), Nosferatu Madre, Skeletons On Mars, Jackhammer Our Names, and Mercy Brown — songs that, by their very nature, slot right in alongside the well-known Clutch classics. And the album, released in mid-September of this year, had clearly been warmly embraced by the band’s faithful by the end of November.
But let’s take it from the top. As is the nature of Clutch tours, the quartet — with an enviable track record spanning over 30 years — typically lines up some very interesting support acts for their runs. This time they chose Tigercub and Green Lung. Two British outfits.
Tvornica kulture, which Clutch were thus visiting for the third time in almost three full years, was just beginning to slowly fill up when Tigercub took to the stage first. The alt-rock trio from Brighton has two albums under their belt: “Abstract Figures in the Dark,” released in 2016, and the freshly minted, blue-as-indigo “As Blue as Indigo,” which came out last year. The band has become very well known on British soil and in alternative rock underground circles, enjoying a strong following. The view inside Tvornica, however, suggested a different picture. Just past eight in the evening, few people were paying much attention to what the trio was doing in the modest half-hour slot they’d been given to show what they were made of. But Tigercub quickly made it clear that this is a band with a refined style and a sharp musical vision. If their opener Favourite Song still had them seeming like they were warming up, a bold, mocking, piercing riff in Sleepwalker immediately signaled that Tigercub means business. Jamie Stephen Hall, the band’s frontman, guitarist, and vocalist, is pure charisma and magnetism. The lanky tall guy is something of a towering figure among his musical peers. He throws himself into his vocal performance with intensity, fury, and bite. His guitar playing shows an enviable and inventive range, demonstrated convincingly above all by tracks like The Perfume Of Decay. Bursts of groove carrying the influence of early Queens of the Stone Age, layered with a clear veil of psychedelia, combined with a tight and compact stage kineticism, proved the band has racked up a solid amount of live experience and road miles. The band grew on you with every passing minute. More and more intensely. Towards the end, the highlight of the set was Stop Beating On My Heart (Like A Bass Drum), which conjured up a vivid contrast between a piercing dose of low-tuned tones, rumbling phrasing, and Hall’s psychedelically ‘zonked’ vocal performance. A band that definitely impresses with their presence, and one well worth keeping a close eye on in the future, they crowned their more than convincing performance with the catchy, growling (yet musical) Beauty.
Green Lung are a story cut from entirely different musical cloth. The Londoners have put out two albums in five years of activity: Woodland Rites (2019) and the current “Black Harvest” (2021). The Nuclear Blast Records charges enjoy a great deal of attention given the quality of both albums — attention that came their way as early as their debut, which was met with lavish praise. Green Lung are a compelling story. They don’t hide their Black Sabbath influences at all. Occult and doom metal, plus a considerably larger dose of noise flooding Tvornica kulture, delivered a supremely tight performance with a vividly animated run of dark songs. Their sheer thunderousness dragged the devil himself up from the depths of the underworld, forcing him to relinquish his throne to the band for at least the 40 minutes their set lasted. The seventies rock impulse is delivered through the integration of organ, though on this evening the organ got the short end of the stick in the sound mix. The shaggy riffs of ‘shaggy’ guitarist Scott Black covered enormous ground in the sonic spectrum, and there was no shortage of bombastic theatre in the darkly ominous performance. Everything works with Green Lung. Tom Templar’s vocals slot into the compositions like a cast-iron fit. They carry an occult, sinister, fatal quality that lends the tormented, penetrating phrasing extra weight and intensity. Backed by the artillery bombardment of the rhythm section and riding the crest of an excellent stage form, the band made clear through their performance that theirs is a musical story deserving the attention of, among others, fans of acts like Cathedral — though they approach doom metal from a somewhat different angle.
Just before Clutch hit the stage, you could barely breathe inside Tvornica. The venue was packed. Every last corner. People crammed in like matchsticks. Noticeably present once again this time were returning Slovenian devotees of the band, every one of them able to tell you they hadn’t been seeing Clutch in Zagreb for the first time tonight. Brilliant energy. And wherever you looked, the crowd was teeming with people in flannel plaid shirts (the author of these lines used to wear the Labod brand kind back in the mid-eighties without the faintest idea they’d one day become part of first grunge and later stoner rock culture). Yes. And all those hairstyles, and the luxuriantly grown-out beards. Everyone wanted to be Neil Fallon tonight.
Clutch are genuine one-of-a-kinds. In more ways than one. That’s precisely what makes them so compelling — it lends them the hallmark of chiseled uniqueness. Even their walk-on was distinctly un-theatrical; you couldn’t immediately tell whether it was a last-minute tech check by the crew or whether the quartet had actually taken the stage. Red light. That’s how it has to be. That’s the Clutch style. Plenty of red light. Not just in the opening section, but throughout the entire show. Fascinating is the stillness of two figures: bassist Dan Maines, who was practically hiding behind his amp with his Rickenbacker throughout the concert, and the stoically motionless guitarist Tim Sult, who may have lifted his gaze from his guitar neck to check what was happening around him all of twice or three times during the show. The bulk of the stage, then, belonged to the maneuvers and magic of the highly charismatic Neil Fallon. The sparkling fireplug of a man immediately won over the crowd with his theatre of wildly varied grimaces and other ‘extreme’ moves, ensuring a constant lift to the atmosphere and dynamics of the show itself. If I can be mildly unkind, Fallon looks like a slightly unkempt, overgrown Robbie Williams who has just blundered headlong into a midlife crisis. The devilish vocalist is the band’s incredible driving engine. Watching all that commanding stage presence, crowned with his instantly recognizable vocal roughness — and especially that constant, intense communication with the crowd — you get the feeling that Clutch sometimes operate like a ‘Neil Fallon Band’.
As expected, the band shook the venue right from the start with tracks from the latest album, opening with the hook-laden Red Alert (Boss Metal Zone) and immediately following it with Nosferatu Madre. In doing so, they instantly unleashed their unique stage stance and musical backdrop, sending the entire venue into a gallop. The crowd’s exceptional participation deserves a special mention. The chemistry inside Tvornica was incredible, hard to put into words, and an additional reason for the sheer enjoyment of the band’s entire performance. What distinguishes Clutch is an extremely deliberately projected stoner rock minimalism, which the band locks into venomously piercing phrases and crushing rhythm — within which Fallon always plays his winning hand by optimizing his instantly recognizable vocal charisma to the fullest. With a note of cynicism and to some degree even mockery — as a form of social critique — the jagged energy of the stoner rock phenomenon and the figure of this singer couldn’t be a better match. This is precisely what gives the band one of the essential trademarks of a complete musical original. On stage, Fallon becomes a proper little devil who, given his physical presence, is also thoroughly entertaining in his theatre.
In a setlist well stocked with the latest songs as well as moments from the previous two albums “Book Of Bad Decisions” (2018) and “Psychic Warfare” (2015), Clutch served up the obligatory crowd-igniters — the classics from the band’s earlier years. The “Blast Tyrant” album was represented by Subtle Hostle, making its return to the setlist after several years, alongside the perennials The Mob Goes Wild and The Regulator. The band’s early period was carried by the eternally vital “Clutch” (1995) classic Spacegrass, which once again claimed a special spot in the setlist that evening. Then came the big finale, in which the band first unleashed a devastating charge of electricity with a mischievous CCR cover of Fortunate Son before swinging through the classic The Regulator and back to new album material, embodied by the hurtling stoner rock dirge We Strive For Exellence and the tribal, southern-rock-inflected Jackhammer Our Names, which closed out the main set in suitably dark fashion.
If Fallon had been amusing himself with a theremin during Skeletons On Mars, in the big finale — the obligatory encore — he reached behind his back and pulled out… a harmonica. No prizes for guessing. At the tail end of the show. The climax of the finale came with the righteously groovy “Earth Rocker” (2013) cut D.C Sound Attack!, which everyone in Tvornica had been feverishly waiting for. Detonation after detonation accompanied an excellent and utterly gripping performance. But as I said at the top of this piece — the concert experience with Clutch in Zagreb wouldn’t have been as intense without the crowd’s exceptional participation. Because what filled that space was, for the most part, burning devotees of the band who created that atmosphere. And so the thousand-strong crowd breathed as one with the band’s every move. Every single second of the show. Knowing every verse. Joining in. Wherever you looked — whether up at the gallery or down on the floor — everything swayed on the back of an enormous seismic shockwave that carried the hypnotized crowd into a genuine trance. The electricity in the air was exceptional. Even after Clutch had already left the venue — which they did without a shred of theatre, as though they’d never set foot on that stage at all — the crowd simply couldn’t believe the show was actually over.
Events packed with this kind of raw voltage and energy are genuinely rare. Clutch’s performance at Tvornica kulture — which they have now conquered and claimed for the third consecutive time — ranks without question among the most intense and compelling live experiences this year’s club circuit of our region has delivered.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tigercub setlist:
1. Favourite Song
2. Sleepwalker
3. Blue Mist in My Head
4. Memory Boy
5. The Perfume of Decay
6. Stop Beating on My Heart (Like a Bass Drum)
7. Beauty
Green Lung setlist:
1. Woodland Rites
2. Leaders Of The Blind
3. The Ritual Tree
4. Graveyard Sun
5. The Harrowing
6. Old Gods
7. Reaper’s Scythe
8. Let The Devil In
Clutch setlist:
1. We Need Some Money (taped intro – orig. Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers)
2. Red Alert (Boss Metal Zone)
3. Nosferatu Madre
4. A Quick Death in Texas
5. Mountain of Bone
6. In Walks Barbarella
7. The Mob Goes Wild
8. Three Golden Horns
9. Hot Bottom Feeder
10. How to Shake Hands
11. Skeletons on Mars
12. Subtle Hustle
13. Spacegrass
14. Fortunate Son (orig. Creedence Clearwater Revival)
15. Slaughter Beach
16. The Regulator
17. We Strive for Excellence
18. Jackhammer Our Names
—encore—
19. Electric Worry
20. X-Ray Visions
21. D.C. Sound Attack!
22. Dirty Old Town (taped outro – orig. The Pogues)
