The beginning....

A brief summary: Everything began in 1988 when Jocke Skog began to work at Rosenlunds hospital in Stockholm. The following year a fellow called Zak Tell became a work partner of his. In 1990 Erlend Ottem and Bard Torstensson began working at the hospital after moving to Sweden from Norway. However everything ended up with the four guys working at the same ward (no. 32, check out the hockey shirts). After Bard had been listening to Zaks endless rapping throughout the hospital corridors for a couple of weeks, they started to chat and they realized that both of them were interested in music, so they decided to come together and write a song.

At this point it was just to have something to do after work. After they had written a song (which they called "Junkie Joe"), they played it for Erlend and he came with a lot of ideas how to heavy up the stuff. Jocke who also heard the songs came up with some suggestions of how to make some improvements on the drum tracks and the beats, and suddenly Clawfinger was a fact, as Bard puts it; " We did not form the band, we just realized we were a band".

The guys came together and made some songs which ended up on a demo recorded in Bards bedroom on a 4 track mixer. The demo contained the following songs; Nigger, Profit Preacher and Waste of Time (lyrics later used for the Truth). At the time when the demo was ready Zak had a friend who worked at the "Swedish National Radio", and this guy gave the demo to a competition on a program called "VOX". However after the demo was played it won and became the "Demo of the week", this was in April 1992 with the song "Nigger".

At this time Per Kviman who worked at the record company MVG was driving in his car when he heard the demo and thought; "Whoa, that was a great track, I've got to buy their record". He then realized that they did not have a record out! So he decided to do one... So he called the guys and asked if they had a record deal and they did not, so Clawfinger signed up for MVG records on the 18th of September 1992. They started to write songs and rehearse, and before Clawfinger had released their own material, they got a request from one of Sweden's most famous rapbands (called Just D) if they would like to do a "jam recording" just for a release through Just D's fanclub, and they agreed. However, the result was really good so Just D's record company decided to release it officially and it became a success.

Well, soon after that Clawfinger had released their own album "Deaf Dumb Blind" ( April 21st 1993). And the rest is history.....ehum....

The Albums....

The debut album, "Deaf Dumb Blind", was released in the spring of `93. Its hybrid of metal and rap was called "the finest hard rock debut album ever to come out of Sweden" by Expressen, one of the leading evening newspapers in Sweden. The album was released internationally by MVG in Sweden, Polygram in Norway, Metal Blade in North America and WEA everywhere else. The album has sold in excess of 600,000 copies and entered the German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Swiss charts. It reached GOLD status in Germany, Sweden and Norway.

Being a Scandinavian band (Erlend and B