Frontman Zak Tell of the Swedish rap/metal combo CLAWFINGER has issued the following update:

"I've been going through my lyrics these last few days, correcting spelling mistakes and changing words and lines I'm not satisfied with as it's soon time to do the final
recordings for the new album! Paedophilia, addiction, death, suicide bombers, self-esteem issues and misers are a few of the topics I've chosen to write about this time around. Not very uplifting stuff, I guess, but hey that's just me and it's not as if I actually plan it, it just happens, I promise! There are a few positive lyrics as well so it's not all gloom, doom and troubled thoughts. A majority of the tracks are though.

"Anyway, I guess there are a few different reasons as to why I chose to write about the stuff I do, the logical one being that the music we play is of a slightly aggressive
nature and therefore inspires darker lyrics, although that's not entirely true as we also have softer and less serious songs and I sometimes also break free from the given formula. Most of the time I don't, though, out of fear of getting lost! The second reason is that it's simply my outlet for all the less pleasant things that go through my head. My everyday life is fairly normal and family-orientated so to get some sort of balance I use CLAWFINGER as my frustration ventilator or whatever you want to call it!

"Today we continued work on a new track that is turning into a beerdrinking song with a singalong chorus. It's sort of a mixture between QUEEN and MANOWAR with a little CLAWFINGER flavour added. Normally I would consider that to be a bad sign, at least the MANOWAR part, but when the first thing that came to mind after hearing what we'd done was 'I wanna drink beer,' then I realized it simply can't be bad even if it's not entirely tasteful. That's rock and roll logic for you. The funny thing about it is that is was one of the first tracks we recorded during the demo sessions for this album but we never managed to make the fucker work. Now it's gotten to the point where you can't even recognize the song anymore, it's gone through so many different arrangements and coatings that it's been totally transformed into something else. That's the magic of music!"

CLAWFINGER's latest album, entitled "Hate Yourself with Style", was released in the U.S. in February 2006 via Nuclear Blast Records.