Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with TotalRock, Clutch’s Neil Fallon offered an update on the band’s new album. The frontman is hoping to start the recording process for the effort in March 2025.

Fallon said the following:

“Well, we’ve been getting together, on and off this year, just writing. And then that sometimes that just means writing a riff, not necessarily a song. But right now, as we speak, behind me, [producer] Tom Dalgety, he flew in from Bristol [United Kingdom] a couple nights ago and he’s done a load of albums, he did our last record, ‘Sunrise On Slaughter Beach’. We’re doing a pre-production session this week. We’ll do another one probably in January. And then again, right before we record, hopefully in March. And what that means is we’re just kind of fleshing out these demos. So when it comes time to record them, we know them and don’t have an excuse to say, ‘I don’t know how to play this song.’”

He continued when asked how far back the new material originated from:

“I think maybe the first ones are maybe from March of last year, but it was pretty piecemeal ’cause we’d go out on the road and then no one really wants to get together after a show and say, ‘Hey, let’s jam.’ So, it was kind of piecemeal, like I said. But there’s a riff that Tom said we did on the last session almost three years ago that he’d like to kick around that was actually from — I think we’ve been kicking that riff around since [2015’s] ‘Psychic Warfare’. It’s sort of like this orphan riff that — it’s good; it just needs to find some friends to live with.”

He also commented on his lyrical process:

“I wish I knew there was a very succinct system on doing this. But I’ll come up with lyrical ideas. I’ll jot ’em down in a notebook or in a voice memo on my phone and I’ll come up with an idea for lyrics. And sometimes they seem to write themselves. Other times I’ll say, ‘Well, they don’t really sound that good. Let’s try it on this song.’ And eventually, it’s like… I don’t know. You whittle away at stuff until you find its final form. I find that songs that have stood the test of time are the ones that were the quickest to write. The ones that take months, but usually those don’t last very long as far as live rotation on stage.”

He also added the following when asked if the band are thinking about how the new music will translate live:

“No. And I think that’s one of the things that CLUTCH fans like about us. I think there’s a sincerity. If you kind of premeditate it, then it becomes less of an artistic enterprise and more of a marketing scheme. And I think because if we like it, then by extension CLUTCH fans like it, because that’s what we’re all here for, as far as this band goes. There’s been occasions where we’ve had songs and I’ve listened to it, and I said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know about this thing.’ And then that became to be some of the most popular songs that we put out. And so I’m not a good judge of that.”

[via Blabbermouth]