Clawfinger is back! After a four-year absence from the music scene, partly due to label issues, the boys from Scandinavia have released a new album entitled ‘A Whole Lot Of Nothing’. Which, by the way, this album is most definitely not!

‘Whole Lot…’ is unmistakably a Clawfinger album. It’s got all the ingredients: catchy guitar riffs, danceable beats and very straightforward rap-lines, dealing with a sorts of social and political issues. At the same time this album is a little different from it’s predecessors. You’ll find a lot of drum ’n bass loops and sampling, for example. Zakk’s rhymes also sound more melodic (he’s singing more on this record). This makes for a more catchy, danceable record, which could quite possibly do very well commercially. Is that bad? Not at all! It’s still very Clawfinger!

However, I must admit, although the songs are already stuck in my brain so I keep humming them every five minutes or so, ‘Whole Lot.

.’ did not blow me away in any manner. Part of me perhaps hoped the guys would use their four sabbatical years to really create something revolutionary, of different. An album, that would make everybody go: “Holy fuck, I never heard something like that by Clawfinger!” Perhaps a 10 minute dance-metal jam, or something…

I’m not counting the daring cover of Ultravox’s ‘Vienna’, transforming the eighties pop-ballad into an industrial, gloomy version of itself. Although even here more could have been done with the song, especially since Zakk is no Midge Ure, and this song relies a lot on the high outbursts of the vocalist.

Adding everything up: if you like Clawfinger, buy the album. If you don’t know Clawfinger, check this album out and if you like it, buy all of their albums! If you don’t like Clawfinger, get your brain examined, and then check out anyway.