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When Clutch's Blast Tyrant hit the streets last spring, frontman Neil Fallon was surprised to learn that the record had something to offend right-wingers of various stripes. Those who proudly helped put George Bush back in the White House were convinced the disc was a cleverly coded attack on the Republican Party and all it stands for. Fallon figures that line of thinking was sparked by "The Mob Goes Wild", which features designed-for-potheads political observations like "Condoleezza Rice is nice, but I prefer A-Roni/And that man on TV who speaks to the dead, you know that man's a phony".

"When the album came out, I saw all kinds of postings on message boards," says the down-to-earth singer, on the line from his Maryland home. "They were basically talking about how we were alienating our Republican fan base. First of all, there's no love lost there anyhow. Second, if you're going to listen to a song that's critical of a political party you support and then decide it is insulting to you as a person, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it."

Meanwhile, red-state Bible bashers saw Blast Tyrant as plain-and-simple blasphemy. Fallon figures that may have something to do with the album's fixation on mythical characters. Various tracks make reference to La Curandera (a female witch doctor and healer found in Hispanic literature), the doomed Greek artisan Daedalus, and, on a truly devilish note, Rosemary's baby. Attracting most of the religious right's ire is "Profits of Doom", which name-checks the books of Genesis and Leviticus and then has rabbis and bishops barhopping while Fallon rambles on about John the Revelator.

"Religious folks have accused 'Profits of Doom' of taking aim at the entire Judeo-Christian tradition," the frontman admits. "That's not accurate either, but what I think what that proves is that, if you look hard enough, you'll find a way to interpret the songs in ways that reflect the angle that you're approaching them from. I mean, I've had people come up to me and thank us for being a Christian rock band. That one really makes my jaw drop."

Clutch is often described as a thinking person's metal band, so it's fitting that it gives listeners plenty to debate on Blast Tyrant . Hard-core devotees spent much of last year arguing whether or not the release was meant to be a concept album, which is no shock considering characters surface repeatedly, religion is a common denominator, and songs cross-reference each other.

in & out... Neil Fallon sounds off on the things that enquiring minds want to know. On authors he admires: "I like science fiction, so I'm reading a lot of Philip K. Dick right now, and I'm still working my way through Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. One of my favourite writers is an author named Stanislaw Lem. He's best known for a book called Solaris , which I'd recommend that you check out." On Clutch's ever-growing cult following: "I stopped looking at album sales years ago. Those kinds of stats are misleading these days anyhow, considering how much stuff gets pulled off the Internet. All I know is that every time we tour, there are more people at the shows than there were the last time." On radio hits: "Unless you are doling out pablum, it's not going to happen. Because of that reality, there are days where you wonder whether the glass is half full or half empty." On the last time he wondered if the glass was half empty: "About 2 o'clock this afternoon."

"Those are red flags for people who look for those kind of things," Fallon contends. "I'd put forth that there are two kinds of concept albums. There are ones that are designed to be very loose thematically, a good example being the Mars Volta record De-Loused in the Comatorium , which is excellent. And then you've got bands that take things to the extreme with rock operas like Kilroy Was Here by Styx, which is just horrible. The songs hold together on Blast Tyrant but in a way that there's still a certain amount of mystery as to what they are about. A lot of times I don't even know."

That's not surprising, given Fallon's past output. Hyperbolic as it might sound, he's one of the cleverest--and most unapologetically bizarre--lyricists in rock 'n' roll. Blast Tyrant bolsters that contention. Delivered over a rumble-in-the-jungle mix of thunder-boogie metal, funk-fortified hard rock, and bong water­flavoured prog are such head-scratchers as "Don't worry, it's just stigmata/Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother" from "Army of Bono". Fallon, who possesses the gravelly bellow of someone on the Mark Lanegan Lucky Strikes diet, prefers to let listeners make what they will of his musings, but he's willing to discuss the little details. Ask him, for example, why the word mother pops up numerous times on Blast Tyrant , and he offers: "A mother is a very powerful figure--she can sometimes be a figure of love, and sometimes a figure of oppression. But whatever she is, she's someone we can instantly relate to because we've all got one. If you're trying to connect with the listener, it doesn't hurt to give them an archetypal character that they can latch on to."

Often in a situation where's he's revising revisions of his revisions, Fallon admits that he works hard at lines like "There's a woman on the hill in a wide-brimmed hat with a shotgun and a .44/And a big bloodhound and razorback boar and black plastic bag in the back of a jacked-up Ford". That Faulknerian beauty is from the funked-up stomper "Cypress Grove", and it paints a vivid enough picture to make one think the singer might one day do well as a fiction writer. He contends, however, that his focus is solely on Clutch, which long ago enabled him, bassist Dan Maines, drummer Jean-Paul Gaster, and guitarist Tim Sult to abandon their day jobs.

Fallon likes where the band is at the moment. (Despite receiving almost no commercial airplay, it's built a rabid underground following, which explains why its Commodore show this Saturday [February 5] is headed to a sellout.) He's happiest that after 14 years in the rock wars, the group shows no signs of burning out; Sult, Gaster, and Maines are cranking out new music at such a prolific rate that Clutch has a huge stockpile of material for its next album, which it begins recording in March. Fallon is still working on the lyrics but says the release will be something of a departure; the band spent much of last year touring with a keyboardist named Mick Schauer, who will be featured prominently.

"We're going after a Deep Purple vibe," the singer reveals. "We hooked up with him right after we finished Blast Tyrant --I had put some keyboards on the songs but didn't want to be playing them on-stage, partly because I'm just not good enough. Mick has really added something to our sound, so we're bringing him into the studio."

Admitting he's a procrastinator and that he isn't immune to writer's block, Fallon is currently--and unsuccessfully--thinking about what he wants to say on the next record. It's unlikely that Clutch will be serving up another concept album, or, more accurately, a record that has fans convinced it's a concept album. It's guaranteed, though, that whatever the singer comes up with, everything will be open to interpretation.

"People bring to the table what they have," he says with a laugh. "Look at Charlie Manson and 'Helter Skelter'. I'm pretty sure that whatever he got out of that song, it wasn't what John Lennon intended." *

Clutch plays the Commodore on Saturday, (February 5).