CLAWFINGER Life Will Kill You (2007)
21 July 2007
"Don't you take life too seriously. No one came out of it alive anyway" - this is the statement that Clawfinger are trying to prove this time.
The band’s lyricist Zack Tell has always had this really convincing way of writing lyrics that prove his opinion on various topics - racism in "Deaf Dumb Blind", religion in the self-titled album, the life of the small people in "Zeros & Heroes". His "sit down and listen to me, cause I know what I'm talking about" approach to writing lyrics has always been one of the band's main strengths. My personal favourite thing about Clawfinger actually.
Well, we have a lot of this in "Life Will Kill You". "Final Stand", for example, is a confession of a Muslim extremist explaining how he'll go to heaven after he dies for his faith. "Carnivore" reveals Zack’s anti-vegetarian view. The title track kinda reminds of Queen's "We Will Rock You" (read "reminds" as "it's 10 times heavier and totally crushes"), and the similarity is totally deliberate, I believe.
However, this time Zack's inspired rants aren’t all that Clawfinger have to offer. The album is freakin' heavy! The guitars are tuned way lower than usual, so the riffs are totally crushing. The guitar sound kinda reminds of what we're used to receive from the 8-string guitars Meshuggah are using since "Nothing". There are also a lot of electronic samples in the tracks and this adds an extra layer to the music. Hear "None the Wiser". You can't help headbanging, don't you?
The other rather surprising thing is that we have real fast thrashy parts in a few places, for example in the end of "Little Baby". I can't remember Clawfinger ever sounding so furious. This song, by the way, is one of the most talked about ones. It's the slowest track with a ghostly female voice in the chorus that adds extra creepiness to it (and it is about a creepy topic anyway - a father raping his daughter).
As a whole, the new Clawfinger is really good. You can hear the album has been touched nicely. It sounds inspired unlike the previous two efforts, which were kinda weak... And as I think about it, "Life Will Kill You" seems to be the band's heaviest and most riff-oriented album in Clawfinger's whole carrier. It is not bad to see how a band that has some history behind its back still manages to come up with something new and fresh after 10 years on the scene.
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- 1The Emptiness Machine
LINKIN PARK - 2A Fragile Thing
THE CURE - 3The Piper's Call
DAVID GILMOUR - 4Queen of What Might Have Been
EAGLE POST - 5New Waters
ODD CREW
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