In a new interview with The Razor’s Edge, CLUTCH bassist Dan Maines talked about the progression of the songwriting sessions for the group’s follow-up to “Sunrise at Slaughter Beach” album, which was released in September 2022. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We’ve been pretty busy this year getting together when we’re not touring, getting together and just kicking ideas around. And we’ve got a good setup at home where we basically rehearse—I shouldn’t say ‘rehearse’, because we don’t rehearse, we jam – in a studio environment, so when one of us comes up with an idea that we like, we can record it right away. And we kind of constantly do that create this bank of ideas. And we don’t dwell on it when something comes up that seems worthy of documenting and then we forget about it, and then, after a month or so, after collecting those ideas, we’ll start reviewing them. And we’ve been doing that since the beginning of this year. And I’d say we have at least half an album of solid ideas, and probably more. But yeah, I’m excited about what we’re doing right now. The plan, if all goes well, is to record something, if not the end of this year, then the beginning of next year.”
Earlier this month, CLUTCH frontman Neil Fallon confirmed to Bloodstock TV Oran O’Beirne for which he and his bandmates recently completed the first demo session CLUTCH‘s next LP with producer Tom Dalgety. He said: “We might try to do that [another session] in January and then another one right before we shoot. Hopefully we’ll have 15 tracks and then maybe pick the top 10 releases and maybe save some for a rainy day.”
Concerning CLUTCH‘s collaboration with Dalgety, Neil said: “Emptyis fantastic. I think sometimes working with a producer, personality is half the battle because they can have all the skills in the world, but if they’re an asshole, you don’t want to work with them. Empty is anything but that.”
With regard to whether CLUTCH fans can expect to see the band’s next studio LP in the spring or summer of 2025, Neil said, “No, it would probably be the third quarter. Nowadays, you have to have a buffer like that. It will be better with vinyl, but we have to plan that in advance.”
O’Beirne also asked Fallon about the possibility of CLUTCH play some of the new material live before it’s released. He said: “Yeah. We try to. It doesn’t always happen. Playing a song live in front of people is a very different animal than doing it in a studio where you can stop and say, ‘I’ve got to go to bathroom.’ There is an urgency that will change a song Sometimes something sounds good and then you put it on stage and it might not be so much, or vice versa.
Last month, Fallon told Neil Jones of TotalRock that he and his bandmates “have been together, off and on this year, just writing. And so sometimes that means just writing a riff, not necessarily a song,” he explained. “But right now, as we speak, behind me, Tom Dalgetyhe flew in from Bristol [United Kingdom] a few nights ago and he’s done a lot of albums, he did our last record, ‘Sunrise On Slaughter Beach’. We are doing a pre-production session this week. We will do another probably in January. And then again, right before we shoot, hopefully in March. And what that means is we’re just filling 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.'”
Asked how far back the musical ideas for these demos were originally captured, Fallon said: “I think the first ones are maybe from last March, but it was pretty piecemeal because we went out on the road and then nobody really wants to meet up after a show and say, ‘hey , let’s jam.’ So it was kind of piecemeal, like I said, but there’s a riff Empty said we did at the last session almost three years ago that he wanted to kick around that was actually from – I think we’ve been kicking that riff around ever since [2015’s] ‘Psychic Warfare’. It’s kind of like this orphan riff that — it’s good; it just needs to find some friends to live with.”
As for how he comes up with the themes for his lyrics, Fallon said, “I wish I knew there was a very concise system for doing this. But I’ll come up with lyrical ideas. I’ll jot them down in a notebook or in a voice memo on my phone and I’ll come up with an idea for the lyrics. And sometimes they seem to write themselves. And in the end it’s like… You don’t like things until you find them its final form, but usually they don’t last very long as far as live rotation on stage.”
Asked about he and his CLUTCH Do bandmates think at all while working on new material about how the songs are going to go down in a live setting, Fallon said, “No. And I think that’s one of the things that CLUTCH fans like about us. I think there is a sincerity. If you kind of consider it, it becomes less of an artistic enterprise and more of a marketing plan. 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 is concerned. There have been occasions where we’ve had songs and I’ve listened to it and I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know about this.’ And then it became some of the most popular songs we released. So I’m not a good judge of that.”
Earlier last month, CLUTCH drummer Jean-Paul Gaster told Colombia’s El Expreso Del Rock about his relationship with his bandmates: “We see each other all the time… Typically we finish a tour and take maybe a week, maybe two weeks off. We just go home and do things at home. , but then we back in the jam room again, and it’s usually three times a week, and usually when we get together, we write new music, all the equipment always has the microphone up, the computers, they’re ready to go. So the minute someone has an idea, boom, I go to “record” and we document that idea. And sometimes that idea is just something we did for an hour, but that’s okay, because you have to keep playing.”
He continued, “Sometimes I play with musicians in projects and stuff, and they kind of get very focused on one idea: ‘Oh, this is the song, and this is the idea, and that’s the only one there is. ” We don’t try to do that. We try to come up with many ideas. And we’re just trying to put as many of these things together. And then when it comes time to make a record, we go through those things, ‘Oh, well, that thing we did last month was really cool.’ And so’Neilyou have this new riff. Okay, let’s put them together. It could be cool.’ And that’s how it works. It’s very organic. There is no fixed way in which things are connected.”
In a separate interview last month, Maine’s Chiles told iRock that he and his bandmates were “in the middle of some deep writing sessions. We’ve been getting together quite a bit, but it’s all focusing on new material and trying to write songs for a new album,” he revealed. “It’s going really well. We get together in a studio and we just record every single idea we have. If it gets to the point where we’ve got two parts together, it’s kind of like a verse and a chorus, and everybody’s We’re happy with it just musically and then we put it aside and move on to something else and we upload those files so all four of us can listen to them at home Neil will listen to them carefully and think of vocal ideas for these parts. And we start putting things together. Sometimes he will listen to something from one day that he thinks would work really well with something from the previous week. And if it requires tempo changes or keys to blend the two parts together, we’ll work on that. But yes, it is a very organic process. Right now I’d say we probably have about 10 solid ideas that you could call songs, but they definitely need a little more fleshing out. But yeah, it’s exciting.”
Asked what music inspires him and his CLUTCH bandmates these days, Dan said, “Everything, everything. Between the four of us, we kind of pull from a lot of different sources and we try to take those influences, whether it’s blues or something heavier, doom-oriented or something funky, and just kind of came it in a blender and create something new out of it. But sometimes, like the last time we were together, we thought, “Well, let’s try to write something uptempo, something over 100 beats per minute.” day we came out with something that we all thought was great, but the pace was like 70. So you can go in with one idea or one direction, but at the end of the day, what you end up with is completely different. You just never know what’s going to come out.”
“Sunrise at Slaughter Beach”which was recorded at Magpie Cage Recording Studio in Baltimore, Maryland, was produced and mixed by Grammy– nominated producer Tom Dalgety (GHOST, ROYAL BLOOD, PIXIES), with additional technique of J Robbins (JAWBREAKER, AGAINST ME!, THE SWORD).
This past April, Fallon confirmed to TotalRock‘s “Turning on the Radio” show that he and his bandmates were working on new music. “I’m definitely the slowest of the bunch when it comes to writing lyrics because I’m trying the same lyrics on different songs and trying to figure out where they can live,” he said.
He continued: “We probably won’t record until next year. And I would say the album will hopefully be out in the third quarter or fourth quarter of 2025. Which sounds like it’s a long way off, and I guess it is, to a certain degree, but it comes pretty quickly for us, we do it with Tom Dalgety again. He was fantastic. But that never stops us from playing these [new songs] live, which they’ll inevitably be everyone’s favorite version and they’ll hate the record version, but that’s just the way it goes.”