Nothing beats the smell of the air as you walk into MTelus on a summer night. It’s not really a pleasant smell, but it’s filled with nostalgia and the promise of hearing loss, and that’s good enough for me.
Nate Bergman was the first up, without his band. He stood alone with his signature southern soul rock, stripped down acoustically. For the uninitiated, think a young Nathaniel Rateliff, and something in his voice keeps reminding me of Canadian legend Rik Emmett from Triumph. It was a fun set that had people swaying and paying attention, even if they didn’t know the lyrics—which in 2025 is a major compliment to an opener.
The vibes shifted slightly towards classic rock with Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown—think the Black Crowes. Bryant is a dynamo on stage, strutting like a rock star of old. He seemed genuinely afraid that someone in the crowd wasn’t going to be entertained. From opener “Shake You Down” to closer “House on Fire,” this was top-level, high-energy CHOM material.
After the guys who looked like anachronisms from the ’70s, we went to the main event that came on stage looking like a group of dads drinking beers at the end of a small-town cul-de-sac. The band hit the stage with “Animal Farm” from their 1995 eponymous breakthrough album. While this wasn’t a 30th anniversary tour, they reached back heavily to the record for the setlist.
Vocalist Neil Fallon is an enigma. If you were to look at him on mute, nothing about him says rock star whipping the crowd into a frenzy, but something about his voice and delivery accomplishes just that. They went straight into “The Mob Goes Wild,” which served as both song title and description of the crowd. The crowd especially appreciated the line, “Everybody move to Canada, smoke lots of pot, everybody move to Canada right now!”
If you needed a break, you were out of luck, ’cause they were coming out of the gate with banger after banger—“X-Ray Vision,” “Firebirds!” and “Slaughter Beach.” The house wasn’t packed—I’d say we were ¾ of the way there—but that just gave the pit a little more room to move, and Montreal’s sweatiest were taking full advantage of the situation.
We got a great example of the contradiction that is Fallon’s energy when, on “Big News,” he had the crowd moshing profusely to spoken word-type vocals over a slow, meandering bassline. Even when they dug into deeper cuts, the crowd did not relent.
The encore gave us a rare treat with “Escape From the Prison Planet,” made famous by John Carpenter’s Escape from L.A. Interesting timing on digging that one back up. They sent the crowd home with “Spacegrass” and big smiles.
A fantastic night of high-octane rock. It was Clutch’s first live show in eight months, but there were absolutely no signs of rust. These rock veterans delivered.
Review – Richard Brunette
Photos – Ryan Rumpel
