Clutch - Impetus

Impetus rewinds Clutch to their scrappy beginnings, gathering some of the earliest recordings by the Maryland band on a single LP.

Long before the riff-heavy blues of their later albums, Clutch were a ferocious young outfit with one foot in hardcore, cutting their teeth in the early nineties. Impetus first appeared in 1997 as an expanded reissue of the Passive Restraints EP, adding a demo of the title track and "Pile Driver" from the band's very first release. All five songs predate their debut full-length, and they capture the original lineup of Neil Fallon, Tim Sult, Dan Maines and Jean-Paul Gaster, the same four players heard on every Clutch album since.

"Passive Restraints" is a tight, lurching blast of attitude, driven by Fallon's bark and Sult's jagged guitar. "Impetus" appears twice, once in rough demo form and once fully realized, so you can hear the song sharpen up. "High Caliber Consecrator" stretches past seven minutes, a heavy, grinding closer that hints at the groove-locked jams to come.

The production is raw and the tempos restless, but the personality is already unmistakable.

For fans who know Clutch from Blast Tyrant or Earth Rocker, this is the origin story, and it hits harder than you might expect.