CLUTCH Guitarist On 'Earth Rocker': 'We Took More Of A Hard Rock Approach This Time'

March 29, 2013

Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal of GuitarWorld.com recently conducted an interview with guitarist Tim Sult of Maryland rockers CLUTCH. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

GuitarWorld.com: It's been four years since the last CLUTCH album, which represents the longest time between CLUTCH releases. Was there any special reason for the long break?

Sult: You know what?! I don't think we even realized it's been so long between albums until we started doing interviews for this album. At least I didn't, anyway. I guess between the time of "Strange Cousins" and "Earth Rocker", we were touring a lot, and we also worked up a bunch of acoustic stuff as well. We went into the studio and recorded a few acoustic songs for the re-release of "Blast Tyrant". So we were doing that as well, and I guess time just got away from us. We didn't realize it has been this long.

GuitarWorld.com: CLUTCH often has been associated with various rock sub-genres, but "Earth Rocker" is more of a straight-up hard rock and roll album. Would you agree that's a fitting description?

Sult: Yeah, that's a good description. The album definitely showcases the hard rock side of CLUTCH, for sure. The focus is definitely always on writing good songs, but we took more of a hard rock approach this time. We're pretty happy with the result.

GuitarWorld.com: I read somewhere that the aim was to capture the live energy of the band onto the album. Do you think you've achieved that?

Sult: Yes, definitely. It captures the live energy of the band better than possibly any of our studio albums.

GuitarWorld.com: It's also the kind of album where almost all the songs lend themselves to inclusion in your live sets. It has a natural flow to it, almost like a CLUTCH setlist rather than a studio album.

Sult: I agree with you totally. Out of all the CLUTCH albums, this will be the easiest one to play live, and the most enjoyable. We'll be adding a lot of the new songs to the setlists, for sure, but we do switch up the setlist every night so there could be some shows where you get no new material whatsoever, or something close to that. We switch it up so much that you never know what we're going to play. Knowing us, we'll just get sick of all the "Earth Rocker" songs within six months and start playing new songs. You never know. [laughs]

Read the entire interview from GuitarWorld.com.

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