Fear Factory
Fear Is the Mindkiller

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

If heavy metal is a genre I listen to with pleasure, I owe it to bands like Fear Factory. Positioned in the early '90s on the less orthodox shores of the genre, they did not hesitate to destabilize a genre that undoubtedly needed an evolution. With them, the three classic rock instruments become mechanisms aimed at producing their distinctive tight rhythms, which, along with industrial-electronic samples and a personal and expressive vocal style, showcased a territory still almost entirely unexplored for the genre's stylistic elements.

It is fundamentally cybernetic thrash tainted with death metal, which together with industrial culture, strong expressionism, pessimism, and dystopian lyrics create exemplary music in its ferocity. Their records are mechanisms and the songs are gears fueled by science fiction themes, where the concept of the human-machine relationship dominates the lyrics. Around all this emerges Demanufacture, an immense work, which represents, according to the author, one of the highest points of metal music. Unrepeatable in production, incredible in composition, shocking in execution, terminal like few: what can be defined as a masterpiece. But that’s another story.

Fear is the Mindkiller (1993) was released two years before the aforementioned album. It is an EP and represents the first in a series of remixes that our band would offer over the years, to be intended as a sort of outlet for the electronic obsession that the FF never exaggerated too much in their main works. There is utility in all this, and personally, I find it in admiring without too many compromises a side of their fascinating musical bipolarity. Besides being the usual assault on the nervous system, this mini-album is essentially a cut-and-paste of some tracks from the previous (and infernal) Soul of a New Machine from 1992. And so, directly from Front Line Assembly, Rhys Fulber and Bill Leeb were invited to fiddle on the assembly line of Fear Factory. The songs are not upheaved from their original core; they are merely packaged among the various layers of their structure according to a decidedly more electro-industrial mood. At times techno and pounding, at times contemplative and ambient, everything remains true to its extreme vein from which it originates. This does not invent anything, nor does it extend the concept hinted at in the previous record, but simply loads the scale further on one side: the more inhuman and mechanical one.

A record that for many may seem (and does seem) negligible, on which, however, I can't help but show bias since I entered their world with the version of Scapegoat present here. I consider it, therefore, a more than worthy episode before the big bang (subsequently followed analogously by the remixes of Remanufacture). The Fear Factory are an indispensable piece in the history of music; I beg you not to confuse them with those ridiculous wrecks (to stay on topic) that today occupy this important name.