Bakerton Trio is Clutch, only Neil Fallon doesn't sing and, this time around, Opeth's Per Wiberg fills in on keyboards of all sorts. They play a groovy, jammy, bluesy riff-based rock with some psychedelic fixtures.

So how is that different from, oh, let's say offhand, the last two Clutch albums, I hear you ask.

Well, to be quite honest, a large part of the answer is: not by much. Tim Sult doesn't break into Malmsteen territory, Dan Maines resolutely avoids making like the second coming of Stanley Clarke and Jean-Paul Gaster does not go to Montreaux. At first the songs sound pretty much like instrumental work-outs on material that could well have found its way onto a Clutch album without bothering anyone's sense of fitness.

But there are distinguishing features - there's an expansiveness on songs like 'Life On Lars', 'Work 'Em' (vocal outbursts notwithstanding) or 'Last Orbit' that, while not outside the scope of Clutch's ambit, does certainly stretch things out differently than they would have been in a vocal-led song environment. Sult does take a few more solo breaks than usual, but more than that he brings on layers and builds that give things a more spacey, endless-jam feel. The horn-like sounds on 'Bill Proger's Galaxy' and 'Bien Clasico' are a bit of a sonic departure, but they are used in a manner that fits really well into the overall ethos. I get the feeling that, even if you're not a Clutch fan, if you are into things trippy and instrumental, from Galactic to Ufomammut, this album is just the ticket.

So this is not a radical departure from the Clutch mould. But it isn't just a lot of songs that with a little more work could just have been Clutch songs. One or two tracks do give that impression at first, but if you stick with album it's quite clearly its own beast and the songs do begin to depart from the strict Clutch format by the third or fourth song. Of course, if you really, really, want to, you could try strapping on that mic and bellowing over it. But you better have some really good lyrics lined up if you do...