Blast Tyrant

If you love having loud lead guitars surgically shear the top of your head off with precise dual stereo separation, then Clutch is your new best friend. Just imagine if Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner had been in a real heavy metal pop band instead of diddling themselves into sterile senility on Berlin and Welcome To My Nightmare and you’ll get an idea what kind of tag team wet dream I’m talking about. And I’m not exaggerating either: Blast Tyrant makes Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal sound like Jagger’s Wandering Spirit.

If you’d like a suitable sonic benchmark, then imagine a souped-up Amboy Dukes (Clutch’s "Regulator" and "Swollen Goat" hail from the same ivy halls of socially activist songwriting that gave us Ted Nugent’s "Stranglehold" and "Stormtroopin’") colliding head-on with a turbocharged Living Color (Clutch’s "Profits Of Doom" is a cautionary rant that picks up where Vivid’s "Cult Of Personality" left off).

But it’s not all gloom ‘n’ doom: Clutch’s cargo isn’t so serious that they aren’t afraid to veer into bozohunter land once in a while ("The Mob Goes Wild" hails from the same reform school of socially retarded songs that gave us Ted’s "Motor City Madhouse").

Clutch is Soundgarden without the relentless screaming. Clutch is Korn without the abuse excuse bagpipe mentality. Clutch is Limp Bizkit without the phony sell-out lifestyle.

Clutch is your new best friend.