The first interview with Zak Tell from Clawfinger went down so well be decided to catch up with him and get an update. •  How are you keeping Zak? How's the family? I'm doin' fine I guess apart from the fact that the music industry sucks donkey dick & is full of rats, parasites & pathetic cowards, then again that's nothing new is it:D! Anyway my son is the sweetest thing, so that pretty much makes up for everything, he's a year and 7 months now and runnin' all over the place causing havoc in the most innocent way, re-arranging my cd & DVD collection, stealing remote controls that can later be found in the toilet bowl & throwing the remains of his food at our dog when he's full up! Still I guess I'll remember all these things lovingly when he reaches his teens & discovers girls & alcohol & all the other things that make our youth so special:D

•  Erland Ottem (one of Clawfinger's guitarists) has recently left the band. Could you go into detail about this and explain how such a radical line up change will effect Clawfinger in the future?

Well there isn't really a whole lot to say, obviously he no longer found being in a band a fun entertaining or cool way to make a living, he didn't enjoy living on the road, he didn't feel happy about being away from his wife & he didn't enjoy making music anymore! For those simple and logical reasons he is no longer with us & it's no big deal to be honest, we've seen it coming for quite a while so it was no surprise & we're better off without someone who is just dragging behind and making things more complicated than they need to be, life goes on & I wish him the best! As for the effect it will have on the songwriting well that remains to be seen, I'm not really worried & I very much doubt it will in any way effect my part of the process lyrically but I'm sure it will be different for Bård as he is now on his own as the main axeman! Last but not least there will be more beer for us in the dressingrooms now and a bit more money to split between us so it can't be all wrong now can it!:D

•  Do you have any funny or interesting drinking stories from Clawfinger's recent tour?

Well every time you go through the process of filling your body up with alcohol strange things happen and alcohol is always available in the dressingrooms on tour so there are lots of idiotic things that have happened that are more or less funny, most of them are very related to being in the band & being on the road and on the bus that we live on so they don't make for very good stories outside of that world I'm afraid! All the same anyone who has been out drinking with the boys knows the drill and know more or less what we get up to, nothing really bad or amazingly stupid but then again nothing very smart or intelligent either:D

•  Got any good cocktail recipes?

Well I'm not much of a cocktail drinker at all actually, I pretty much stick to beer or the occasional bottle of wine or a Gin & Tonic or ten! Anyway I was at a party with a friend just a few weeks ago and we decided to make a fucked up cocktail using everything available in the bar, all the difference brands, sorts & flavours of booze on the table, it tasted awful but we downed them anyway and then went about partying:D

•  We recently did an interview with the UK head of the Raelian movement. They support human cloning. What's your view on cloning?

Well I honestly don't know enough about them but my spontaneous reaction is that I think it's some fucked up shit, aren't we having a hard enough time as it is trying to figure out how to become decent peaceloving humans, why put even more fucking people on this planet and make things even more complicated when we're already fucking ourselves up so badly, I simply don't think we're mature enough yet to be doing these sort of things! Also I kind of like the idea of having sexual intercourse in order to create a human being but maybe I'm weird or something:D

•  How do you feel about Bush and Blair's decision to invade Iraq and George Bush's insistence the war is over even though fighting is still going on?

Oh please spare me from those fools, I don't even want to think about them, it's too depressing, I fart in their direction like any sane person would and watch while they fuck eachother and the rest of the human race in the arse until we're all blown to smithereens!

•  Let's talk music. What are you listening to at the moment? Any recommendations?

Well I think it's a crying shame that nothing happened with the Skindred album “Babylon” as I think it was one of the best releases of 2002, also I love Tomahawks but otherwise I'm backtracking quite a lot at the moment so I'm not totally up to date with all the coolest, newest, hottest releases, I heard the Britney Madonna song was really fantastic though……NOOOOOOOOT! Uhm what is there to recommend, anything by Frank Zappa rules, herbie Hancocks 70's stuff is amazing & the same goes for George Duke, John Zorns “Naked City” album is crazy, all of Mr.Bungles albums are classics, Tom Waits is an amazing lyricist & vocalist, Public Enemy & Chuck D are rap music at it's best, Barkmarket are a very under rated metalband & the same goes for Helmet, Beastie Boys “Pauls Boutique” is a forgotten masterpiece, Alice In Chains wrote some beautiful songs with great harmonies & heartripping lyrics, Bob Dylans musical poetry needs no explanations, Bob Marleys “Survival” album is a great politically aware reggae bomb, Dead Kennedys tore shit up with their political satire and there's too much great stax & funk music to even mention, the list goes on & on & on, I just simply love music!

•  The Darkness are all the rage at the moment and getting a lot of press. What are the chances of Clawfinger releasing a Cock Rock album?

Those chances are very slim as you've probably already realized! Actually we ran into the Darkness guys earlier this year and ended up drinking a few pints with them at some airport in Germany, turned out we were playing at the same festival and we'd both lost some of our backline & were waiting for it to show! I'd never heard of them so I asked Justin what kind of music they played and he told me it was sort of retro catsuit cockrock or something like that, I didn't understand what he was on about and thought he was taking the piss but he explained to me that they were very serious about being a classic rockband with all the falsettos & so called clichés but that it was for real and done with nothing but love….well he said something like that but maybe those weren't his exact words? Anyway I think they're great and they seemed like nice blokes so I wish them the best of luck, so far they're definitely on top of their game!

•  Clawfinger have been making albums for a decade now. Do you think the band will still be together in ten years time?

That's impossible to answer man, ten years ago when we got the same question we said no chance and here we are 10 years later as ugly as ever still making music that doesn't really fit in anywhere! It's not rapmetal enough to sell to the Linkin Park/Limp Bizkit crowds and it's not Metal enough to sell to the Metallica, Slayer crowds, god knows how we've managed to reach this far & stick around this long?:D We'll just keep on going as long as the good times outweigh the bad times and that's as much as I can say without saying something stupid just for the sake of writing something! Anyway we have a studio in the suburbs of Stockholm that we co-own with another great Swedish band called Meshuggah so the day Clawfinger cease to function and the whole situation doesn't feel fun any more we'll start a production team instead and become the new Rick Rubins or something, the only thing missing is the beard:D

•  Do you have any plans to release a solo album or start a side-project?

Well I think we all have those dreams and we all have ideas that sort of don't really fit into the Clawfinger format, I doubt it will ever happen for me personally but you never know, I'd like to do something a bit funkier/groovier myself with more of a Beck/Beastie Boys mixed up with Mr.Bungle feeling to it! As for Jocke well he does stuff all the time, right now he's working on a score for some film & he's always making hardcore fucking music that sounds like Meshuggah mixed with a bit of stoner rock & speedmetal:D Bård has a lot of pop in him and does tracks at home & he's also done a bit of producing for other bands through the years! At the end of the day though Clawfinger takes up a major part of our time and that's what we try and focus the most on, the future is wide open though!

•  Any chance I could get a signed copy of your new album?

Sorry mate but I'm totally out of copies myself, I'll check with the record company and see if they give enough of a fuck to send me a few more and if they do then I'll get one of them signed and send it to you okey!

•  Fancy joining the Cult of the Drunken Prophet?

Well what do I have to do except sell my soul to the devil and drink even more than I already do, fill me in and if what I hear makes sense then give me that paper bet your ass I will sign:D