Way
back in 1992 to 1995 Fear Factory were something to behold. Fast and hard metal
riffs backed by some techno-industrial noise of the type that Trent Reznor
would agree with, double bass throbbing drums, and alternatingly death and melody
metal inspired vocals coalesced to give rise to some of the most harsh and at
times frightening metal on the market. Now, Fear Factory, despite being all of
those things still (in addition to once again being composed of its core
members Burton C. Bell and Dino Cazares) is just a tad repetitious. That’s
great if you are a Fear Factory purist, but for the average metal fan,
repetition can be the touch of death…at least as far as sales are concerned.
That being said, The Industrialist is probably the best Fear Factory album
since Demanufacture, simply because
this Fear Factory purist is quite happily reminded of Fear Factory’s glory days
when listening to The Industrialist.
Soul of a New Machine (1992) and Demanufacture (1995) established Fear
Factory as a dark fantasy/sci-fi fan’s favorite band. Musically anticipating
hard R types of techno-industrial sci-fi/horror like The Matrix (1999), Fear Factory often dealt with dark lyrics that
obliquely address the potential evils that mankind’s rampant abuse of
technology might unleash upon itself as well as its machine children. The Industrialist delves most deeply
into this long standing, and oft revisited, theme in Fear Factory’s music.
Being a concept album, The Industrialist
tells the story of an automaton (The Industrialist) that is slowly gaining
sentience as it gathers more data and suddenly finds itself striving to live in
opposition to the desires of its creators. Obviously there is much, much more
to the story and its inherent metaphors, but no matter how interesting a
concept album’s story is, if the accompanying music doesn’t deliver the story
in a worthwhile capacity all is for naught. So how do Burton and Dino do
putting the music together this time out after the decent but lacking reunion
album Mechanize?
The
answer is that The Industrialist,
despite being a solidly composed and executed album, it suffers from the type
of repetition that most of Fear Factory’s albums do. Dino plays the same
lighting riffs over and over with the only varying factor in the composition
being the speed at which he plays them (or so it often sounds). Again, like the
story to The Industrialist, Dino’s
riffs are a little more varied than that simple description, but honestly not
that much. That’s where Burton’s growl come overdubbed harmony manages to make
the music palatable after just a few songs. Also, producer/programmer Rhys
Fulber rounds out the sound with some well composed and inserted industrial
noise, beats, blips, and blats. Perhaps the most interesting thing about The
Industrialist is that Burton and Dino jettisoned live drums for a drum machine.
The change isn’t terribly noticeable at first, mostly because since their
inception, Fear Factory’s music has been filled with machine and staccato like
drumming. The various drummers that have been part of Fear Factory over the
years have been nothing short of amazing practitioners of their craft, but with
the advent of the drum machine, the beats and speed can be taken to the next
level, albeit with a definite loss of the human factor in the music.
Perhaps
that’s part of the point here though as the story behind The Industrialist is
about a machine that makes the harrowing journey into human like consciousness.
The Industrialist himself is a spiritual cyborg, just like Fear Factory themselves
are. Regardless, for dark sci-fi inspired metal, you can’t beat Fear Factory,
and my guess is that you wouldn’t really want to try to.
Essential
Tracks: “New Messiah,” “God Eater,” “Depraved Mind Murder”
Rating:
3.5 out of 5 Industrial Beats
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