Fear Factory
Obsolete

THE REVIEW

You may have heard about it or maybe it slipped past you in the CD store, because such mistakes shouldn't happen anymore.

'Obsolete' is a CD to buy sight unseen, a rarity in the genre or rather a spectacular blend of styles. Opening the artwork, you glimpse something special apart from the lyrics, what you are seeing is a story written by the intricate growl producer Burton C. Bell. He tells us how in 2076 we will be defeated by what was initially our creation: the cyborgs; and the songs follow the plot weaving into the album's context.

Listening to it, I find various cohesive elements with the previous CDs, from the catatonic riffs of the first one to the increasingly complex drum parts of the second. With the bassist taking more charge of the music, the bass sound is more refined, listen to "Edgecrusher". A brutal assault opens the first track "Shock" where for the first 32 seconds there is speed and precision on the drums, essentially the best drumming in Fear Factory's history. It continues with the aforementioned leading to the third track "Smasher/Devourer" where the drum changes between verses and choruses are more pronounced, fused with the rest of the band. The android "Securitron [police state 2000]" is a song that tells how the invader defeats the police state that doesn't know how to oppose it, and in "Descent", the most beautiful, it is man wondering how he will escape this abyss "Life did not offer me more than false destiny".

With "Hi-Tech Hate" it’s the weapons of mass destruction, of the cyborg, that are devastating, anticipating "Freedom or Fire" which are the thrashiest and most powerful songs on the CD. The title track is not very cheerful as it renders obsolete all that we believed in a "Resurrection", we find the dark and melodic "Timelessness" ending with a world in ruins and a damn cyborg that enslaves us.

Compared to "Demanufacture", I find it better mixed with less harsh sound, but comparing "Descent" to "Dog Day Sunrise", I find this CD less dispersive and more concrete. They don't abandon the metal vein for a crossover sound; they simply don't make a "Demanufacture" part two, asserting themselves as the legends of the industrial genre.