CLUTCH
Planet of Zeus

13.07.2013, Principal Club Theatre, Thessaloniki, Greece
words and photos by Ivaylo Alexandrov

Let me start by breaking the stereotype that in Bulgaria we are the greatest rock audience. No, we’re not. The Greeks are.

Yes, those people who live in crisis and make noise with it, which receive financial help from the EU and live easy. These same people listen to more and more varied music than the Bulgarians, from their music shops you can buy things that here are available only through the Internet and in their rock bar it is not hard to hear Rainbow and Orange Goblin right after Iron Maiden and Kyuss.

These same people filled Principal Club in Thessaloniki (that’s right, not the capital city) with more than 1000 similarly thinking fellows at a Clutch concert on August 13. And a day later in Athens for the same band there were more than 2000.

And in Thessaloniki the whole crowd was shouting the lyrics while swaying like a bottle in the trunk of an old car on a dirt road. Here… Hm..



Clutch is one of those bands that with years of unstoppable making of new music, ceaselessly playing live, lack of any pose and with full devotion to the rock and roll have finally reached the level where we can’t add them to the underground anymore.

Their last album “Earth Rocker” put them on the front cover of Decibel and their headline tour in USA and Europe this sprng and summer had many sold out dates. Including Athens.

Significant Bulgarian posse of Clutchoids marches towards Thessaloniki in the morning of July 13. After getting oft the well cooled coupe of the Peugeot, the Greek heat slams such a dry and thickened by the sun slap that I want to crawl under the seat and live there until November. We occupy the hostel – a total of 13 people and 3 of us we are going on a journey to find the club while the others relax in the rooms.

Principal is situated in the industrial part of the city, about 100 meters from semi-moldered houses inhabited with gypsies and mutts.

And in front of the club: “Hey, isn’t this Jean Paul?” He is! We shake hands and talk to one of our favorite drummers while from the hall there comes Neil Fallon himself! “Neil, can I shake your hand?”, I spit the most stupid thing that comes into my mind, standing dumbfounded by the unexpected meeting.

From the bearded smiles comes: “Well, of course” and we talk to our personal hero. Holy shit!



Then we let them go and browse the merchandise before return to our group downtown. In half an hour we rejoin them and in a small restaurant 20 meters down the streets there is the band with the promoters of the show. And they don’t mind us to join them (including a small gypsy girl with an accordion who gains the sympathies both of the Americans and the Bulgarians and happens to come from Sofia), to chat a while, to sign our CDs and LPs and to take photos with them.

Really great guys!



Tonight there are over 1000 people in Principal Club.

The venue is full and the Greeks from Planet Of Zeus have just started pouring fuzzy riffs and pounding rhythm. They are really energetic; they jump on the stage and seem like uncontrollable kids of Motorhead and Kyuss, raging through the tracks of their two albums.

They too are really successful now; they are often invited by the European stoner festival and the reviews from their shows are always ecstatic. This night isn’t exception. The four guys run wild and the audience clearly loves its local heroes. People are waving in an amorphous mass, headbanging and crowd surfing while shouting the texts.



In short, they make Planet Of Zeus to feel like stars. And there’s a good reason!

“Woke Up Dead” and “Eat Me Alive” strain the atmosphere so much that when the Athenians leave the stage, they leave the hall buzzing with high voltage like the feeling under a power pole before a thunder storm.

Clutch. I am in front of the stage, holding my photo camera and even though I have seen them live and today I have met the guys and yet I feel my stomach like a steampunk machine when Neil and the others stand before us and enter the ultimate rock and roll of Earth Rocker.

The fans behind me go berserk, the whole room echoes of the chants which makes me smile like idiot, I can barely imagine how happy are feeling the four guys before me. There follow three more new songs, I sink behind the front bars and the crowd immediately carries me in its irrepressible dance.

Bodyclashes, sweat and headbanging – it is such a pleasure to share so important band with so many people with which you are on the same wave this night.




After the furious beginning we pass on the so well known grove from “Blast Tyrant” – the album that in 2004 sent Clutch in the range of vision of wider audience and media interest. And also the first one with the current producer Machine.

“Cypress Groove”, “The Profits of Doom” and the madness of “Mob Goes Wild”. Well yes, it surely goes wild.

“Please allow me to adjust my pants so that I may dance the good time dance!” And the dances boil even more savagely.

“Everybody move to Canada, smoke a lot of pot” and everywhere in the hall there smells of marijuana, even a dude from the security serves a light to the fatty of two kids at the bars. Rock’n’roll mob!




A few new songs more, a leap towards the previous album with “50,000 Unstoppable Watts”, Neil puts on his Gibson and it becomes clear what is next. We are poured by the guitar haze from the intro of “The Regulator” and a minute later explodes the epic flow of the song. Then we have groovy dances with “Big News I” from 1995 and the perky “Pure Rock Fury” and the official set ends with the last two tracks of the still warm “Earth Rocker”.

But no, even though “The Wolf Man Kindly Requests...” the party to over, there is no way to bring out 1000 overheated rock and roll fans, thirsty for more, more, more… And there is more!



Neil returns on the stage with his guitar and still with the first chords of “Electric Worry” mighty roar deafens the music and on my left side someone ignites red road flare, the song bursts mighty and everything boils over in an greasy mush of sparks, smoke, silhouettes and flying over human bodies, scrambling on each other in attempts to spit out their lungs while screaming “Bang, bang, bang, bang! Vamonos, vamonos!”




 “Thessaloniki, today is YOUR day”, sings the bearded preacher and the song flows in the rhythmic “One Eyed Dollar” and the concert ends.

Then I realize how exhausted both physically and emotionally I am. There follows recharging with beer and rock and roll in night Thessaloniki.

And the wait for (much) more Clutch live.