Clutch Announce New Album Wasted Lands And Share Video Premiere
Clutch are back with a new album, and thankfully, they appear to have brought the riffs with them.
The Maryland veterans have announced Wasted Lands, their 14th studio album, due for release on 22 January 2027 through their own Weathermaker Music label. Alongside the announcement, the band have unveiled the album’s title track, giving us the first proper look at what comes next after 2022’s Sunrise On Slaughter Beach.
And this one sounds like it was built with the stage in mind.
Recorded at the band’s Doom Saloon base in Frederick, Maryland, Wasted Lands sees Neil Fallon, Tim Sult, Dan Maines and Jean-Paul Gaster working with producer Machine once again. It marks the first time the band have reunited with the producer since 2015’s Psychic Warfare, a collaboration that also produced Blast Tyrant and Earth Rocker.
According to the band’s own description of the record, Clutch initially explored a more experimental direction before deciding that some of the ideas were simply becoming “weird for weird’s sake”. The resulting album instead leans into a more energetic, riff-driven approach designed to translate directly to a live audience.
That makes Wasted Lands sound less like a reinvention and more like Clutch doing what Clutch do best — only with another few decades of experience behind the wheel.
The Tracklist
The Drifter Returns
Stage Fright
Loaf ‘N Jug
High Class Action Lawsuit
Chestburster
Beware The Fever
Wound Collector
Colorado Fuel And Iron
Streets Are His
The Green Skull
Wasted Lands
The Message Is Clear
Still Independent. Still Clutch.
There is also something fitting about the fact that Wasted Lands is arriving through Weathermaker Music, the band's own label.
Clutch have spent years building a career on their own terms, and the new album continues that approach. The band have maintained the same core four-piece — Fallon, Sult, Maines and Gaster — across more than three decades, while steadily developing a catalogue that moves between hard rock, blues, stoner grooves, psychedelia and the occasional left turn without ever sounding like it belongs entirely to any one box.
Their previous studio album, Sunrise On Slaughter Beach, arrived in 2022. The new record therefore represents their first full-length collection of new material in almost five years.
There is no attempt here to manufacture a comeback narrative. Clutch never really went anywhere.
They just took their time.
The Riff Collective
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