Clutch return with the single The Drifter Returns from their 14th album

Clutch have released "The Drifter Returns," a song the Maryland hard rock band has been playing live on and off for the last couple of years without ever putting it out. It arrives with an official lyric video.

The track is the first piece of their 14th album, the follow-up to 2022's Sunrise On Slaughter Beach. Metal Injection reports there is still no announced release date for it.

Frontman Neil Fallon told Metal Hammer last December that finishing and mastering a record now takes up to six months, and that owning their own label removes the pressure to ship on schedule. "We'd rather wait and make it as good as it can be," he said.

Fallon also described the writing as slower going than it used to be, with a number of songs already in the can but no prediction about a release. Every year gets harder, he said, because the existing records are already there.

The band have reportedly reunited with Gene Freeman, the Grammy-winning producer who made Blast Tyrant in 2004, Earth Rocker in 2013 and Psychic Warfare in 2015 with them, and who has also worked with Lamb of God and Crobot. Until the album lands they are touring: the Maryland State Fair on September 12, then a run through October and November that reaches Charlotte, New Orleans, Cincinnati and Norfolk.

The single sits on the release calendar with the rest of the autumn rock and metal schedule, a season that also has Corrosion of Conformity and The Sword on a US run and Mastodon's ninth album already out.