The Gauntlet: What has Clawfinger been up to lately?
Bard: We have been touring a lot. They have had us touring very much lately. We have been touring Eastern Europe and Western Europe. We have like 13 or 14 gigs in France. We have been doing really good shows. It has been weird. All of the shows have been good this time. I don't know what has happened with this band, but it feels really good now. The record came out in November. Before that we were writing songs since 2004 til the summer of 2005 when we started recording in our new studio. This time we produced the record ourselves and recorded everything in our own studio. It's really good to do everything this time because we have really been too scared about making mistakes on earlier albums. This time we had a "fuck it, let's go" attitude. This really affected our song writing. If the song didn't work for us after like ten minutes, we just threw it away and would write a new song. All the songs you hear on the album are very spontaneous.
The Gauntlet: This album has a completely different sound than previous albums.
Bard: Yeah, in a band, you have one person leading and trying to hold the whole thing together and doing most of the album. This was my role earlier. This time I didn't have time for it. Jocke had the sound for this album and he was the main one this time. This album sounds much more fresh than the previous albums.
The Gauntlet: The band does sound very much revitalized on not just the guitars and keyboards, but even the vocals are much different.
Bard: I guess it had something to do with Zak not being very much involved in the musical part. He comes and puts the vocals to it. Before we were a rap metal band and we'd make music for Zak. This time Jocke made music that he wanted. He was just trying to make music, not rap metal. Somewhere I think Zak realized he didn't have a choice, he just had to follow the music. After a while we got conscious about it. We sat back and listened to the first songs and realized that this was the style for the band and we wanted to develop it a little bit more.
The Gauntlet: The vocals on this album have a rapid fire Helmet and Meshuggah sound.
Bard: I wonder why. I really wonder why. Did you know we own a studio together with Meshuggah? You are right on the spot man. It is impossible to not be inspired by the Meshuggah guys. We work in the studio at the same time as those guys so it's hard to not be inspired by them. It is a really good sound for us. He had released five albums prior to this and they were all related. It was very hard to make different sounding songs in our old style of music.
The Gauntlet: I am glad with all this change, Clawfinger didn't change the lyrical message of the songs.
Bard: That would have been a revolution for us. We tried to do that once and it was totally something new to us. Just kidding. We feel it is very important in life to bring up social issues. Why not sing about something that is important than singing about what most people do. Many bands can write good lyrics that are poetic, but most of the time I think that lyrics can be crafty in general.
The Gauntlet: A lot of bands do sing songs with a socio-political theme, but they usually stick to one main theme.
Bard: I can only speak for myself as Zak writes the lyrics. I can just quote what he says. When he sees and feels something he just has to write about it and make lyrics about it. It's not just one exact thing that he is totally into. He just watches the news and reads the papers and finds something that is really unjust and starts writing about it. For me, I think racism is something that is really important. Also intolerance is a key issue because I think intolerance creates most of the crap in this world. It is really hard for societies to understand. For people to get into that and not see things as just black and white. To understand what is happening in Iran and Iraq or China is very hard for people as they are too quick to judge. People should really go out and learn about others.
The Gauntlet: Why have tracks titled 'Nigger' and 'Faggot' on an album? No matter your views, those words insight hate among people.
Bard: Well, of course we got some beatings for that. Let me speak about the 'Faggot' thing in our new song. I think it is very important to provoke people to think. That is the reason for writing a song with a title like that. People can discuss this forever, but if you don't provoke, you won't get the true feelings to the surface. That is our reason for using such a harsh term.
The Gauntlet: The cover art is also very graphic and darker than the previous albums.
Bard: For us it is always like the same thing happens every time we make an album. We never know what to put on the cover of the album. We always have to have a cover and a name for the album. It was just a coincidence that one of the guys in the band found this graphic artist on the internet and saw this and some other pictures. We thought 'wow, this looks great'. It suits to the title and the new style and maybe it is very cryptic. It's a good hook line for a song. That's the way I think it should be, it makes people think. It is very random and not really thought through though.
The Gauntlet: Two videos are already out for the album.
Bard: 'Hate Yourself With Style' is not officially a video. I made the video while being bored in the studio with a camera. I wanted to explore my video editing side so I just made a video.
The Gauntlet: Clawfinger song lyrics have a story behind them. Why does the band do mostly performance based videos instead of conceptual videos with a story?
Bard: I wish I had the time to make videos an art too. We never do though. Videos are always a last minute call and we need a video to be commercial. I don't really have a strong feel in any of the videos. They are really more of a commercial. I wish I had something better to say than this, sorry.
The Gauntlet: Any plans for a US tour now that you have a US release?
Bard: I would love to tour there. We have never had a proper release there, but now we have one so maybe we can get on one.
The Gauntlet: Do you feel now is the right time to release an album in the US. The band doesn't have a big fan base yet or a tour to support it.
Bard: For us it was like ok we are going to release the album in the US, great. We liked the idea because we had never done that. We ignored the United States for so many reasons for so many years. We released the first album in 1993. We had lots of record companies that wanted to sign us to release there. Our management committed to one of these companies and just before the release, they decided to not release it in the US. After that, our management said no to all other offers. So we never had a release there. For the next album, we signed a six album deal with Geffen. We were really happy about this. Two months before the release, the guy who signed us at Geffen left and Geffen called us and said they didn't believe in us and bought us out of our contract. So we never got the US release. At this point we don't believe the record companies. We want to see the money on the table before we sign anything. That is the reason we have never been keen on going to the United States. It seems like we have a really good thing with Nuclear Blast. They are a true record company. This time these guys love our music and that's why they signed us. It is much more heart felt and more honest.
