Clutch, Karma to Burn & Element of Surprise

It was somewhere around 8th grade, just when I was getting over my whole Dr. Dre / Snoop Dogg phase that I first heard Clutch. My friend had brought over some motorcycle video, and on it was a song called “Impetus,” by some strange band named Clutch. At the time it was probably the single gnarliest song that I had ever heard. In my adolescent imagination the creators of such a song were probably also pretty gnarly; I imagined Clutch performing the song like a pack of rabid dogs, with crazed looks and violent gestures. But judging from what I saw Monday night at The Brick Works, this idea was about as accurate as many other adolescent presuppositions: not very.
The openers, Element of Surprise were, in fact, so surprising that I missed their set. But luckily for me, I arrived just in time for Karma to Burn, who were also very surprising in both their uniqueness and absolute cock-jarring, sludgy riffing.
Consisting of just three members, none of whom apparently had any interest in vocal duties, Karma to Burn proved once and for all that good music is good music, regardless of whether or not there are vocals. What differentiated Karma to Burn from many other instrumental acts I’ve seen was that most of the songs were structured as if there was supposed to be vocals (in fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to me in the least if Karma to Burn actually did or still does have a lead singer who just wasn’t there). But the music did not suffer from the lack of vocals, nor did it suffer from its formulaic nature; the riffs just seemed that much heavier with each repetition. Karma to Burn reminded me of Down or maybe C.O.C, and, of course, Clutch.
In regards to the latter, they were next on the stage. Vocalist Neil Fallon, and the rest of the band - Tim Sult (guitar), Jean Paul Gaster (drums), and Dan Maines (bass) - started things off in an unexpectedly mellow fashion. Accompanying this mellowness, was a corresponding lackadaisical stage presence; aside from Fallon, the band seemed, for the most part, to be not terribly excited about being there. The music also seemed to suffer from this lack of excitement. Some songs seemed to degenerate into free jamming (which is usually not such a wonderful idea in metal) and even the songs that I recognized didn’t really stir any sort of excitement within me.
I will say, however, that the crowd (which was more sizeable than I had expected) was in stark opposition to my opinion. They threw themselves about with reckless abandon, sang along to the songs they knew, and cheered like they knew the ones they didn’t. Maybe it was just the erroneous preconceptions that I had held about what a Clutch show would be like that caused me to be so bitter about the reality of the show itself, but one way or another, Clutch did nothing to thrill me. Not that it was a horrible experience, by any means; it just failed to live up to my lofty expectations.
- Daniel Taylor
- Photo by Myles Stenger

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