FEAR FACTORY Frontman Talks About Performing Entire 'Demanufacture' Album

Andrew Schizodeluxe of The Rockpit recently conducted an interview with vocalist Burton C. Bell of Los Angeles cyber metallers FEAR FACTORY. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

The Rockpit: So you guys are coming back to Australia next month. Is this still part of "The Industrialist" tour or is this a separate thing?

Burton: No, the Australian leg is just going to be the "Demanufacture" tour and we are doing "Demanufacture" in its entirety.

The Rockpit: This is a very cool idea. How did this idea come about initially?

Burton: It was kinda like a joke at first. Last time we were there for "The Industrialist" on tour, we were playing a lot of tracks from "Demanufacture", and we just thought, "Why don't we just play the whole damn record?" and the promoter was, like, "Oh, that's actually a great idea. We should plan it properly," and blah blah blah, and just started talking about it. And we thought about it, and it was Australia that embraced FEAR FACTORY wholeheartedly first and so Australia was where we received our first silver and gold records for "Demanufacture" so we figured that we'd go to Australia.

The Rockpit: Just getting to "The Industrialist", your last album, which, by the way, was a great album. Was the return of Dino (Cazares, guitarist) a conscious effort to get back to the old FEAR FACTORY sound and style or was it something that you were already thinking about for a while?

Burton: A little bit of both. We get "Mechanize" and "Mechanize" was like a getting-familiar process working with Dino again, but after writing and recording and touring with him for a couple of years, we returned to that friendship and comfort zone that we're very familiar with, and so before we started writing the record, I spoke to Dino and Rhys Fulber (producer) and was like, "Hey, you know, there's elements of FEAR FACTORY that are missing that I really like, more the industrial element," and so we don't have to make this an industrial band but... "Demanufacture" was our moment of when we became an industrial metal band and that's what when returning to that sound would be very beneficial. So blending the elements making it an industrial metal record was key.

The Rockpit: So you guys have been around for a long time now. Do you feel that you are still flying the flag for the industrial metal genre or do you think there are other bands out there that are maybe pushing the boundaries a bit and trying to do what you guys started 20-plus years ago?

Burton: I don't know, there's not really many bands like us. I mean, there's MINISTRY still around but they're not really doing the industrial thing anymore, and there's RAMMSTEIN, but they're not really that metal. I think FEAR FACTORY is just… we do what we do. If we are at the forefront, it's because we continue to do what we do.

Read the entire interview from The Rockpit.