Wearing their modern and classic rock influences well and truly on their sleeves Oslo’s Motorfinger have their sights set on rock world domination with their new EP ‘Black Mirror’. Citing their inspiration from such bands as Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden you get what you’d expect from them. If you are partial to the slickly produced, heavy leaning alt-rock of the very late 90’s and early 00’s then Motorfinger should be top of your new bands to look out for list. ‘Bastards and Sins’ kicks off the bands 3 track offering with plenty of guitar effects before belting out a lovely chugging bass set to lyrics from frontman Maurice Adams, clearly a man who means what he’s singing with his vocals delving into the James Hetfield style of delivery at times. In some ways this could have been released 10 years ago as it has that well-worn trait of macho-angst set to dirty and downtuned riffs like a man in a 4×4 getting his problems out in the only way he knows how. Make no mistake about it, Motorfinger are not a bunch of skinny city boys with neatly grown hair whining about their girlfriends, this is mans rock. There’s hint of Randy Rhodes afoot on ‘Dust over Stone’ with some beautifully executed lead guitar work from Tommy Fossli. ‘In My Dreams’ completes the EP in a suitably stomping manner, and sounds like a more coherent and less gimmicky version of Disturbed. If you’re looking for something completely new and ground-breaking you probably won’t find it with Motorfinger. They are a band that are definitely of an era, that era being the modern rock/metal that shot to popularity at the turn of the century, basically our generations answer to the hard rock of the 80’s, and whether this is your bag or not, you cannot deny that they do it incredibly well and ultimately that’s what matters. They sound completely tight as a unit and each member is as good as any of their contemporaries of bands previously mentioned when discussing influences. Not every band ever has to reinvent the wheel to make a decent contribution to the musical world, as long as they do it well and Motorfinger do it really well.
