Clutch fans in St. Louis finally get a show six years in the making

I love the kind of crowd that shows up to a Clutch concert; you can feel the vibe they give off before even getting inside the venue. It’s a group of real rockers — people who share a deep love and respect for everything grunge and rock & roll. Those rockers came filtering through the doors of The Factory in St. Louis an, this time, they all shared more than just a vibe. There was a shared eagerness after waiting painfully long for this specific night to roll around.

The last time Clutch came to town, the show was cancelled due to everyone’s best friend COVID… but on April 14th in the year 2026, there was no Coronavirus in sight and fans packed The Factory tight, ready for something uncomplicated, heavy, and completely satisfying. The bill was a three-act geography lesson in American underground rock and metal: JD Pinkus out of Austin, Corrosion of Conformity coming up from Raleigh, and headliners Clutch making the trip out from Maryland.

Three different corners of the map, three different origin stories, three different styles of music.

JD Pinkus opened the show all alone — just him, a banjo and a tangle of loop and FX pedals — and, you know what, it worked! JD looked like a psychedelic pirate up there onstage: barefoot, tattoos, full beard, trinkets hanging around his neck collected from shores most people don’t visit. Pinkus is the former bass player of the Butthole Surfers, which explains a lot about his ease in front of an audience and his instinct for combining layers of something primitive with something hypnotic. What started out as curiosity from the crowd turned into genuine engagement as the loops stacked up and the banjo grooved along, finding its place somewhere between an Appalachian folk song and a fever dream, leaving everyone slightly disoriented… but in a good way. A lot of the crowd, including myself, was caught off-guard by what JD brought to the show, but no one was upset by it.

Corrosion of Conformity followed up next, sending the temperature in the room up 10 degrees.

This Raleigh-based band has been grinding hard since the early 80s and that history really shows. But not in any nostalgic way, in a way that demonstrates when a band doesn’t have to prove anything to anybody anymore. Their groove-heavy metal feels like a freight train live that can knock you on your ass if you’re not ready for it. The same crowd that was cautiously appreciative of JD Pinkus was now the same crowd that was fully locked in for the rest of the night. CoC gave them every reason to stay that way, too.

The room was primed and ready by the time Clutch took the stage, and the band wasted no time rewarding them. Neil Fallon is one of the greatest frontmen working in music today, not because he’s fake or anything, but because he is completely and totally present when he performs. His voice, his delivery, his presence as he roams the stage — it’s the physical authority of one of the last great showmen. The set was exactly was it needed to be: no reinvention, no filler, and absolutely no apologies. The band debuted a new single, “Colorado Fuel & Iron”, which landed itself perfectly in the setlist like it had been there for years and, with a catalog as deep as Clutch’s, that’s really all you can ask for. The whole show really gave everyone the show they’ve been hoping for for so many years. I mean, it’s Clutch. Whoever said anyone would be disappointed?

Photography by Thomas Semonco

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