The beginning....
A brief summary: Everything began in 1988 when Jocke Skog began to work at Rosenlunds hospital in Stockholm. The following year a fellow called Zak Tell became a work partner of his. In 1990 Erlend Ottem and Bard Torstensson began working at the hospital after moving to Sweden from Norway. However everything ended up with the four guys working at the same ward (no. 32, check out the hockey shirts). After Bard had been listening to Zaks endless rapping throughout the hospital corridors for a couple of weeks, they started to chat and they realized that both of them were interested in music, so they decided to come together and write a song.
At this point it was just to have something to do after work. After they had written a song (which they called "Junkie Joe"), they played it for Erlend and he came with a lot of ideas how to heavy up the stuff. Jocke who also heard the songs came up with some suggestions of how to make some improvements on the drum tracks and the beats, and suddenly Clawfinger was a fact, as Bard puts it; " We did not form the band, we just realized we were a band".
The guys came together and made some songs which ended up on a demo recorded in Bards bedroom on a 4 track mixer. The demo contained the following songs; Nigger, Profit Preacher and Waste of Time (lyrics later used for the Truth). At the time when the demo was ready Zak had a friend who worked at the "Swedish National Radio", and this guy gave the demo to a competition on a program called "VOX". However after the demo was played it won and became the "Demo of the week", this was in April 1992 with the song "Nigger".
At this time Per Kviman who worked at the record company MVG was driving in his car when he heard the demo and thought; "Whoa, that was a great track, I've got to buy their record". He then realized that they did not have a record out! So he decided to do one... So he called the guys and asked if they had a record deal and they did not, so Clawfinger signed up for MVG records on the 18th of September 1992. They started to write songs and rehearse, and before Clawfinger had released their own material, they got a request from one of Sweden's most famous rapbands (called Just D) if they would like to do a "jam recording" just for a release through Just D's fanclub, and they agreed. However, the result was really good so Just D's record company decided to release it officially and it became a success.
Well, soon after that Clawfinger had released their own album "Deaf Dumb Blind" ( April 21st 1993). And the rest is history.....ehum....
The Albums....
The debut album, "Deaf Dumb Blind", was released in the spring of `93. Its hybrid of metal and rap was called "the finest hard rock debut album ever to come out of Sweden" by Expressen, one of the leading evening newspapers in Sweden. The album was released internationally by MVG in Sweden, Polygram in Norway, Metal Blade in North America and WEA everywhere else. The album has sold in excess of 600,000 copies and entered the German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Swiss charts. It reached GOLD status in Germany, Sweden and Norway.
Being a Scandinavian band (Erlend and B錼d are from Norway, Zak and Jocke are from Sweden), Clawfinger played at all the major Scandinavian festivals in the summer of 93. In the autumn the same year, they undertook European tours with Alice In Chains and Anthrax. A 55-date European headline tour took place in the spring of 94. During `94 Clawfinger played at festivals such as Rock am Ring, Rock in Reim (Germany), Dynamo Festival (Holland), Tourhout Festival and Werchter Festival (Belgium), Roskilde (Denmark) Out in the Green Festival (Switzerland) Hultsfred and Storsj鰕ran (Sweden).
Clawfinger have received many prestigious awards in Sweden. At the Zeppelin Awards in `94 (the only music awards for rock in Sweden), Clawfinger made a grand slam with four awards (Breakthrough, Best Hardrock, Best Producer and Best Video), which was followed the same year by two Grammies (Best Hardrock and Best Video) at the Swedish Grammy Awards.
In 1995, the second album "Use Your Brain" was released. The band had now gained some experience as musicians. As the frontman Zak commented, "the difference between the first album and the second one is 160 gigs". The album became critically acclaimed and has sold over 500.000 copies worldwide.
In 1995 the band played at the gigantic Monsters of Rock Festival in South America with Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Faith No More and Megadeath.
After four years of hard work the band took a well deserved break. They spent some months with their closest friends and family and "got their batteries reloaded". Back together again, they were clearly inspired and had lots of new ideas and melodies. They "explored" new musical territories and a lot of exciting "experimental recordings" were made. In a shorter term - they developed and found some new musical directions for the "clawfinger" record that was released on September 29th, 1997.
The first single and video from the album was "Biggest & The Best", a hard-hitting, almost provocative, song with an aggressive feeling. It sounds to some extent like earlier single-successes from Clawfinger. The lyrics are tough on - and makes fun of - all those people "who believe that they're God's gift to the human race".
In another song, the anti-religious "Two Sides", they use influences from oriental music. In fact, some of the lyrics are in Arabic! Translated into English the lyrics goes, "Allah is the greatest, Allah is the only one who can help you". So the Clawfinger-boys are Muslims? No, rather the opposite. The song discusses how religions can be misused to abuse people, but remember that there are always two sides to every story!
The album consists of 12 tracks, plus a special CD-ROM bonus track which gives everyone the opportunity to make their own Clawfinger-song. It includes drums, guitars and bass loops.
The album was recorded in the Decibel Studio in Stockholm. It's produced by American producer Peter Reardon, who started out in the Houston punk rock scene and ended up engineering and mixing rap records for artists like Coolio, Geto Boys and Scarface to name but a few. Rich Mouser recorded the album, and it was mixed by (in Sweden almost legendary) Stefan Glauman, in the MVG Studio.
The album has sold 150 000+ copies so far.
