FEAR FACTORY's DINO CAZARES: 'I've Been Very Lucky To Play With Some Of The Best Drummers In My Genre Of Music'

On February 16, FEAR FACTORY guitarist Dino Cazares took part in a question-and-answer session at the California College Of Music in Pasadena, California. You can now watch video footage of the event below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On whether he ever took the advice of a record company with regard to FEAR FACTORY's sound:

Dino: "The first time somebody heard our stuff, they were, like, 'This is not original.' I'm, like, 'Okay. Why?' I was asking myself why. So we went back to the drawing board. The thing about the band when we first started was, like, 'Okay. We've gotta make music. We've gotta just keep recording and just keep stuff going.' So the first demo we did was three songs, the second one was seven songs, the third one was sixteen songs. That's a lot of songs. So we just went back to the drawing board and just kept recording and recording and recording and trying to perfect our sound and trying to create something original. It wasn't until that one lucky break that we got that somebody actually said, 'Yes.' The guy felt like… The reason why he signed us is 'cause he felt that we were doing something different. In our genre, at the time in the '90s, a lot of the music was pretty aggressive, for our genre. The death metal and grindcore scene was massive. Bands that you probably never heard of, like NAPALM DEATH and MORBID ANGEL, were really big. So we were trying to come up in that scene, but stand out at the same time. So our vocals were very aggressive, heavy stuff, and all of a sudden, we had these beautiful, melodic vocals, [and] a lot of record companies were, like, 'What the…?' Even record company guys were saying, 'What the fuck is this? We don't want this. We don't look at this as a product we could sell.' So it took that one guy, the one A&R guy, to really believe in what we were doing and saw the future of the band. And it took him to go back to the owner of his record company and say, 'Look, this is the future right here. This band is the future.' And, of course, the rest is history."

On who was the best drummer that he has ever played with:

Dino: "I think that I've been very lucky to play with some of the best drummers in my genre of music. And it's hard to pick one that is the best. But they were all good in their own way, really. When you're playing with guys like Gene Hoglan, Tim Yeung, Nick Barker… I played with Joey Jordison from SLIPKNOT. Nick Barker was in CRADLE OF FILTH and DIMMU BORGIR. They were some of the best extreme drummers that were out there. Gene Hoglan is very well known; he's been around for twenty-five, thirty [years]. So they were all good in their own way. But I have to give credit to the original drummer that I started with, Raymond Herrera, because with him, we developed a style that became the norm today, where it's guitars and drums syncopated as one. Back in the day, when we first started, we couldn't afford a lot of equipment, we couldn't afford samplers and keyboards, but we loved music of that type of stuff. Like a lot of hip-hop bands, back in the day when they didn't have to pay anybody, they were sampling off everybody's records. Same thing with industrial bands; early electronic bands were sampling guitar riffs, they were sampling beats. And you name it, they were sampling it. So we couldn't afford that, so I was trying to copy it. So back in the day, when you were sampling music… I'll give you one example: a band like PUBLIC ENEMY sampled a SLAYER riff, and the riff was 'Angel Of Death'. In the middle was a riff, and it goes [hums riff]. There was always a little pause there [after the riff], and you could the whole pause. And I was, like, 'How do I copy that?' So I just learned how to palm mute and stop the guitar to make it sound like a loop machine. So that's why on the record 'Demanufacture', one song in particular, there was a song called 'Self Bias Resistor', there's a riff on there that goes [hums ruff], and that kind of became a style. And other bands have kind of used it and progressed from it, and it's in a lot of music that you hear today. But the one band that made me wanna kind of do that was a band called METALLICA. They had a song called 'One', and in the song 'One', [there was a syncopated riff in the middle]. I [thought], 'Okay, that can actually be done if you play it.' That's the only time they've ever done that. I was, like, 'Wow! I wish they would do it more.' So me wanting them to do it more made me do it, and that's how I wanted to start my band, and that's how I wanted my band to be. I'm not saying like METALLICA. Just that one little snippet of music really inspired me to go out and do guitars and drums syncopated the whole time, a whole record where it's like that. So every snare hit, every kick hit, every tom hit was the exact same picking as my guitar. So every time I hit a downstroke, upstroke, doubles, triples, the same thing would be with the kick drums and the snares. So it was all syncopated together, and that was the first time some people ever heard that done that way."

The California College of Music is a forward-thinking modern popular music college that accepts students from all over the world. Originally founded in 1999, CCM first blossomed under the supervision of legendary trombonist Wayne Henderson and Grammy-winning producer Reggie Dozier, who outfitted our campus with a world-class recording studio. CCM is known for its encouraging environment and distinguished faculty of experienced music industry professionals who teach students in ideal classroom sizes and performing ensembles.

The mission of the California College of Music is to empower aspiring musicians with the skills and confidence to thrive in the modern popular music industry.

For more information, visit CCMCollege.com.

FEAR FACTORY's latest album, "Genexus", was released in August 2015 via Nuclear Blast Entertainment.

The band last year completed a U.S. headlining tour on which it performed its classic second album, "Demanufacture", in its entirety.

A new FEAR FACTORY studio album is tentatively due before the end of the year.