Blast Tyrant (Deluxe Edition)

Few bands have managed to prosper inside a bubble of their own devising and outside the constricting rules of the music business as successfully and for as long as Maryland's Clutch; who continue to unleash album after album of barely evolving, groovy stoner rock, regardless of label affiliation and changing trends. In fact, the only concession made with their sixth album (give or take a few EPs and "odds and sods" sets), 2004's Blast Tyrant, was its reported first-time adoption of digital recording, although you'd never really know it from the end results. Of interchangeable sonics with pretty much any of their previous albums, most of Blast Tyrant's numbers are textbook and unmistakably Clutch, with their punchy, often circular-sounding guitar riffs, gruff vocal delivery, and über-ironic lyrics distinguished into three by now familiar categories: tales of unfathomably obscure imagery ("Spleen Merchant," "(In the Wake Of) The Sollen Goat," and "Eulogy for a Ghost"); darkly comical diatribes ("Profits of Doom," "Army of Bono," and "Subtle Hustle"); and politicized rants such as "Worm Drink" and the standout "The Mob Goes Wild" (which seriously rails against the government's poor handling of wartime death, while laughingly encouraging "everybody to move to Canada now, bum rush the border guard," etc.). Additional mentionables — for good and ill — include opener "Mercury" (part song, part feedback, all free-form), the unusually acoustic and psychedelic "The Regulator," the Hammond-laced instrumental "Wysiwyg," and the particularly memorable "(Notes From the Trial Of) La Curandera" — all of which also fit into the above three cited categories. In other words, Blast Tyrant is likely to confound those who have previously been confounded, and appease those who were previously appeased, leaving Clutch, as always, safely ensconced in their timeless and impenetrable creative bubble.