Clawfinger

by Vincent JeffriesSpicing up the Swedish rap-metal with some Middle Eastern melodic flavor and more dynamic vocals, this eponymous release added a much-needed dimension to Clawfinger's six-year-old approach to industrial hard-hop. Choice cuts like "Chances" have the incredibly fat guitars, fresh textures, and hooks to prove producer Peter Reardon's considerable knob-twisting abilities and world music vision. While Clawfinger has its expansionist moments, the Swedish outfit was not going to abandon its mostly monochromatic and mechanized signature sound on this, the band's third full-length release. The middle section of Clawfinger, with songs like "Not Even You," "Nobody Knows," and "Wrong State of Mind," features material that carries the same Kool Moe Dee vocal delivery over mostly by the numbers industrial metal guitar washes. Clawfinger reached their musical peak with the release of their genre-bending debut, and they earned the resulting critical praise and Euro-award hardware soon after. But by the 1999 (U.S.) release of this self-titled disc, many American rap-rock and industrial metal artists like Rage Against the Machine and White Zombie had done much better work with the musical amalgams, leaving these Scandinavians in a relative stasis, which this eponymous disc did little to excite.