Is it too soon to talk about The Return of Tomorrow (review here) in hindsight? Probably. The album turns two next month (it was released June 14, 2024). Two years is a long time in pop, but in heavy rock circles it might as well have been on Wednesday. They’re still touring for it, though really it’s not like the San Clemente four-piece whose journey we’ve now charted from about 41 years ago to now need an excuse to get on the road. But you understand what I’m saying. This album remains their latest, and of course, as always, I stand by the review. I’ll do my best to retread it as little as possible, but if I make the same point over again — “duh, Fu Manchu are heavy and fuzzy,” or somesuch landmark insight — I beg your forgiveness.

In the context of the band’s discography, one might count The Return of Tomorrow as album number 13. The staggered release of the three Fu30 EPs (discussed here) between 2020 and 2023 assured that as dark as times got, the band was never completely absent, and about as soon as they could get back on the road, as I recall, that’s what they did.

That said, The Return of Tomorrow was a breath of fresh Fu in the six-year LP dearth since 2018’s Clone of the Universe (discussed here, review here), and it revealed a new trajectory for the course the San Clemente four-piece — the continuing lineup of founding guitarist/vocalist Scott Hill, bassist/sometimes-backing-vocalist Brad Davis, lead guitarist Bob Balch and drummer Scott Reeder; the latter three of whom by this point were awash in solo/side/other projects — that began a decade earlier with 2014’s Gigantoid (discussed here, review here), departing somewhat from the rolling largesse of the prior 2009 outing, Signs of Infinite Power (discussed here), and finding a production style able to speak to the multiple facets in their sound between punk, heavy metal and the riff-led shove-‘n’-groove they themselves helped pioneer.

The Return of Tomorrow is on the longer end of Fu Manchu records at 49:12. It’s second only to 1997’s The Action is Go (discussed here) in runtime, which clocked in at a peak-CD-era 55 minutes, aided in part by the lengthy “Saturn III” and a good bit of silence. The Return of Tomorrow, however, uses all of its time, and in a way that the band never had before, with a stated intent toward 2LP experience.

So, in that regard, it’s actually short. The way Hill explained the structure of the album in the advance promo was as follows:

When I listen to music, it’s either all heavy stuff with no mellow stuff mixed in or just softer stuff with no heavy stuff. I know a lot of bands like to mix it up and we have done that before, but I always tend to listen to all of one type of thing or the other. So, I figured we should do a double-record with seven heavy fuzzy songs on one record and the other record six mellow(er) songs, fully realizing that maybe I’m the only person that likes to listen to stuff that way.

We kept both the records to around 25-30 minutes each as to make it a full-length release, but not have each record be too long. We don’t write a lot of mellow(er) stuff in Fu Manchu, but a lot of the riffs worked minus the fuzz. If you’re a vinyl person, both records are pressed at 45rpm to give it the best sound quality. If you’re a digital person, can make your own playlist and mix both the records together.

This quote is especially telling in light of what I’ll call the most overlooked aspect of The Return of Tomorrow — at least by me; I don’t read anybody else’s reviews — which is the flexibility of approach. The emergent willingness in the band to mess around with their own forms, structures and processes. “Lifetime Waiting” opens that ‘mellower’ second mini-LP and you wouldn’t say it’s not heavy, but there is absolutely a shift in intent from “Loch Ness Wrecking Machine,” or “Dehumanize” at the outset, or even the slower but still brash “Haze the Hides” earlier on. “Solar Baptized” and “What I Need” bring psychedelic flourish and continued drawl.

The title-track appears in the latter section, ahead of the signature start-stoppage in “Liquify” and quiet, brief jam-out in “High Tide” that finishes the collection. Unless, of course, it doesn’t, because even Hill notes that for someone listening on a digital format, if they want to they can move the songs around however they like to change their own experience.

Understand for a second what that really says. Here’s someone who’s been playing in bands for over 40 years, and who has been instrumental in developing one of the most recognizable sounds in the six-plus decade history of heavy rock and roll. There is no other Fu Manchu and there never has been, and at least going by outward appearances, I don’t think anything happens in the band without Hill‘s ultimate approval. And what he’s telling you is the order doesn’t matter. 30 years on from their first record, with a string of classics along the way, where Fu Manchu arrived was like this third-eye-open album presentation. Make it what you want, if you want. How many artists exhibit that kind of flexibility, at any point, ever, let alone after so many years of steering their own creations?

Next week I’m wrapping up this Fu Manchu catalog series, as we’ll be caught up from the beginning to now, so I’ll save any conclusions or extrapolated life-lessons for that, but what The Return of Tomorrow most emphasizes to me specifically is the undervalued creativity and dynamic in the band. Part of that stems from having such a defined sound, but while they were not engaging any radical aesthetic changes in these 13 songs, they nonetheless offered them to their listenership in a way they never had before and made something new from them as well as within them. I don’t know of another outfit who could’ve done the same thing and pulled it off so well.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Next week: Quarterly Review. You tell The Patient Mrs. so I don’t have to.

It’s the week I have, so I’m going with it. There won’t be much else posted, and again, we close out the Fu Manchu catalog series next week with the live album that followed this studio release. I didn’t get to review it last year when it came out, so I’m looking forward to engaging with it. After that I’ll probably do Claypool Lennon Delirium or Nine Inch Noize. I’ve got a backlog of Friday Full-Lengths at this point before I think about another discography. Though, to that: Acid King? Orange Goblin? Thinking about that too, I suppose.

Before I go further I want to wish the very best to T.R. Morton of Freedom Hawk, who revealed this week his pancreatic cancer diagnosis as the band canceled their appearance at next week’s Cosmic Sonic Rendezvous in NYC, where I was looking forward to seeing them again. I hope to see him back onstage having freshly kicked cancer’s ass as soon as humanly possible, and in the meantime, send strength and love to help him get there and encourage you reading this to do the same.

The Patient Mrs.’ mother, whom I love dearly, came down yesterday to facilitate some backyard planting, which they did this morning while I worked on the above. We also last night had my family over to celebrate one of my oldest nephew’s friend’s birthdays — I was outside with The Pecan and my cousin playing wiffe ball for most of it, when I wasn’t picking up the food — and so that was busy. I don’t know if the kid enjoyed himself or not, but I said happy birthday anyhow and got stared at weirdly by teenagers. Like why would you even?

This weekend is Desertfest London and Berlin. Having been at Oslo last weekend, I’m jealous of those partying down in either city. Oslo was amazing, a killer trip. I was tired coming back, but I recovered a bit this week and feel good about how it all went down. I’m looking forward to Freak Valley in a few weeks.

Zelda update: I did the Water Temple in the ‘Ship of Harkinian’ PC port of Ocarina of Time the other evening. It took the entire evening. And I was using a walkthrough, albeit in stonerly fashion. The Pecan wants to do Bottom of the Well, so I might let her handle that after she gets home from Girl Scouts. Her mom is out for a bit anyhow, I think. I don’t know if she wants to do the Spirit Temple or not. But that’s where I’m at with that.

I came pretty close to 100-percenting Echoes of Wisdom, which is low-key and unabashed fun, low intensity in a way I very much enjoy, and I did play a bit of Tears of the Kingdom on the plane on the way to Norway, though not as much as I’d have liked because I didn’t have a plug under the seat. I also this week downloaded the Dusk or Dusklight as I’m seeing it called fan port of Twilight Princess, and I might try to play through that next.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Thank you for reading and for keeping up with the site however much you do. Fuck fascism, capitalism and white supremacy forever and ever and ever.

FRM.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

 

Tags: At the Dojo Records, California, Fu Manchu, Fu Manchu The Return of Tomorrow, San Clemente, The Return of Tomorrow

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2026 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.