You can’t really expect your favorite band to stay in the same creative mindset forever. Everyone is going to want to stretch their creative muscles every now and again, and unless you’re a band like AC/DC who can be the perfect one-trick pony, you’re going to want to switch things up more often than not.
It’s only natural for every band to explore creatively from album to album, but fans don’t always want that, and Neil Fallon from Clutch is a bit (understandably) tired of it.
In a recent interview done by Knotfest, Neil spoke at length about the band’s need to evolve, saying “That’s one thing I never really quite understood. ‘Oh, I wish you could return back to your old sound’ or whatever.
That’s like, ‘well do you want the same thing over and over and over and over?’ There are bands that found a very specific thing and did very well doing variations of that one or two themes.”
Despite calling out bands like The Ramones and AC/DC directly, Neil seemed more pissed off about fans that just want to see their favorite bands as their own personal nostalgia acts, saying :
“I think a lot of it has to do with people wanting a time machine. It’s not so much they want the same music, they want the period in their life that they associate with that music to come back.
Musicians are not wizards. They can’t take you back to your glory days or a good time in your life, because ultimately I think that’s what people are actually looking for.”
Granted, Neil had said that bands that find their lane and stay in it are completely fine…but that’s all about whether they exactly want to stay in that lane or not.
Clutch might have a very specific brand of metal going for them, but there’s so much more that’s worth exploring, too. And even if the new stuff isn’t to your taste, you’ll always have the classics to look back on. You can watch the interview with Neil below.