I will see Clutch at any opportunity, so I wouldn’t pass up the chance to see them a little over an hour’s drive from my house and in my old punk rock stomping grounds of Fort Wayne, Indiana. We got to the Pierre’s entertainment complex in time to hear the last two songs of Valkyrie’s set. They reminded me a bit of Sleep – heavy stoner riffs and Black Sabbath-like vocals.
Legendary metal rockers Corrosion of Conformity were up next. My wife asked, “This is going to be a blast of metal, isn’t it? With a name like Corrosion of Conformity, I imagine it’s going to be pretty loud.”
She was right, of course. They dropped more metal in the place than a crane at a scrapyard. “Who’s Got the Fire?”, “Broken Man,” “Albatross,” “Seven Days,” “My Grain,” and “The Door” were all big hits with the crowd. It was no surprise that the band played “Vote with a Bullet” in an election year show, and even less of a surprise that the crowd went nuts for it.
A tall man in a trucker cap and sleeves shirt stood next to me with his right arm raised to throw devil horns for almost the entire COC set. He was the type of guy who’d worked all week at a truck parts factory in the summer heat knowing it would all be worth it because he was going to see Corrosion of Conformity that weekend. It was a metal set for a metal crowd, and that guy next to me was Midwest metal all the way. I’m sure he was pleased as punch when COC announced they’d have a new album in 2017.
Clutch, as is customary whenever I’ve seen them, opened with two fast rockers. “X-Ray Visions” and “Firebids,” both off Psychic Warfare. They had the crowd in their hands within the first verse of “X-Ray Visions.” I heard my first Jean-Paul Gaster drum solo that led into a powerful rendition of “Immortal.” “A Shogun Named Marcus” was an unexpected surprise from their first record before they jumped forward more than two decades to blast out “Sucker for the Witch” and then slow down for “Son of Virginia” off the new record.
“Pulaski Skyway” was another bit hit with the crowd thanks to its “Andy Warhol / CBGB’s” chant and jab at Donald Trump (“Chump Towers”). “Behold the Colossus” is a fine example of Clutch’s epic Dungeons and Dragons rock, and it was a fine combination that night with “Cypress Grove” and its lyrics about a cult of mysterious women. Where else but a Clutch show will you see hundreds of metalhead dudes pumping their fists and singing / chanting about women in wide brim hats? Plus, Tim Sult’s guitar solo on “Cypress Grove” was outstanding.
“Your Love Is Like Incarceration” led into another surprise (for me, at least) – “Strange Cousins from the West.” I hadn’t heard that live since I first saw Clutch in 2009 at a street fair in Chicago when they were promoting that record.
A great part of the set was when Neil Fallon acknowledged Corrosion of Conformity’s influence on the band and brought out COC front man Pepper Keenan to jam with them on “Spacegrass.” The crowd went nuts to the point of chanting “C-O-C” like they did at the end of COC’s set.
“Noble Savage” was a strong way to end their main set, with the crowd chanting “Unapologetic lifer for rock and roll.” Their encore included “The House that Peterbuilt,” “Electric Worry” (a favorite of my wife), and “One Eye Dollar.”
“We started this tour in Florida,” Neil Fallon said at one point during the show. “Then we went to Mississippi, then to Arizona, and this is by far the hottest show of the tour. No contest.”
The crowd cheered for this, and the band showed no signs of fatigue. Neil Fallon even made sure to ask us if we had a second wind at one point and that getting tired was “unacceptable.” It had been in the low 90’s with tropical rainforest-like humidity in Fort Wayne all day, and the inside of Pierre’s (with its minimal air conditioning) was like a sweat lodge – perfect for a show meant to melt your face, perfect for Midwest metal lovers like the guy with the Clutch logo tattoo across his throat I saw at a convenience store after the show, and a perfect end to the work week.
Keep your mind open.
[Thanks to Doug Weber for getting me a press pass to this show and for being an all-around cool cat.]