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Rating: At first listen, it seems that we are "simply" in front of an album of epochal stature. In the highest sense of the definition: the density of meanings it encapsulates, the way it portrays the historical era in which it is inevitably set and foresees its future, and on the musical side, for the new frontiers it opens to unprecedented, yet virtually inexhaustible, interactions between different languages and genres, as well as for the importance that comes from the development of a musical genre (metal, transcending sub-labels and sub-genres) providing the impulse for the evolution of rock tout-court.
Something similar to what can be said about the importance of works such as Metallica's "Black Album" (systematization into classic status of trash-metal), albums by Jane's Addiction (broadly influential on many subsequent bands), Sonic Youth, and above all, a more appropriate parallelism perhaps, for the ability to foresee the future in the form of intuition shown by Public Image Ltd. in their second, crooked and brilliant "Metal Box".
The context in which the debut album of this American band comes to light is that of a musical scene characterized by the coexistence of the Seattle scene at its peak and the simultaneous emergence of "genres" and bands that, before the change in "mainstream taste" (with Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana at the top of the charts being objectively unpredictable in American charts before certain changes), including "industrial metal", and particularly the album "Psalm 69" by Ministry, also monumental, which beyond the boundaries of a "cult" work, established itself as one of the most significant (even commercially) albums of 1992.
Moving on to the examination of the musical contents, one seems to be able to define the sound of "Soul Of A New Machine" in the following way: it sounds like a kind of "Death playing like Godflesh": those of "Pure", in particular, with Justin Broadrick and Richard Hampson (ex Loop) on guitar, that is, that current of EBM reinterpreted from the perspective of ex grind-core musicians (Broadrick) and ex space-rock (Hampson) in a project (even if not entirely explicit) of transcending the sectoral canons of Death-Metal, Trash-Core, Grind-Core, Industrial, Electronic Body Music and other languages pertaining to very distant spheres, but that in fact characterizes the profile of some of the best Earache bands (Scorn, Fudge Tunnel, Sleep, Pitch Shifter, etc.).
The Fear Factory, recording for "rival" Roadrunner (Sepultura, Paradise Lost, etc.), seem in this sense to bring to completion a work of perfect synthesis and fusion of sounds, such as the harsh guitar tones of Trash-Core, the hyperkinetic (and virtuosic) drumming of Grind-Metal, and (most fascinatingly) confer these sounds the basic imprint of electronic-matrix sounds: the Fear Factory, in other words, manage with this masterpiece, to accomplish from a Death-Metal form what the Ministry with the aforementioned album achieved from an industrial and electronic matrix. The perfect syncretism of the sounds contained here is, in a sense, one of the highest and boldest expressions of what has been called the "perfect harmony of cross-over".
Listen to the tracks that best give an idea of this new internal grammar: "Arise Above Oppression", techno-metal rhythm in death version, with guttural or distorted voices, giving the impression of a quasi-"expressionistic" vision of rock or metal; meaning music in which the theatricalization of suffering, the view of the horror of the contemporary world (but not only), and the sense of existential shock it provokes give shape to distorted and deformed portraits of people, interior/exterior landscapes now focused on more important details of the whole, now on large open spaces ("Suffer Age", "Lifeblind") of the historical scenario where an elusive detail ("a flower in the trash") can have the meaning of a saving hope, or even more, shed a poetic light on a scene of tormented and unspeakable suffering. But it is in the sequence "Natividad" (dedicated to the Latin American origins of the frontman's mother) and "Big God/Raped Souls" that Fear Factory possibly reach the peak of the entire album: a deafening noise in the first serves as an intro for the second, an invocation with an ultra-distorted voice that screams "so I am viciously raped, so I am in burning violence... in America: this is America, this is America, and I love America..." repeated in an obsessive and paroxysmal way, actually seems (even if perhaps unintentionally) to reconnect to expressionist poetry. What follows belongs to the Encyclopedia of Rock of all eras: suspended percussion followed by their own echo, repeated two-three times, guitar explosion in a memorable riff by the musical standards of death metal (Sepultura-Death-Entombed: the triad of the genre's top exponents), the traditional guttural "singing", which however (uniquely) alternates with ethereal, almost female voices. An idea (I feel like saying) ingenious, which makes what was thought to be an already perfect album for its genre sound like something that, incredibly, goes much, much further: the staging of the "Ballardian crash" man-machine, is actually the pretext to introduce the main idea of the album, the encounter with an increasingly mechanized world, the dehumanization and the consequent sense of alienating estrangement find in these "obsessive, trying obsessively to free themselves from the reality they narrate" music one of the deepest layers of the meaning of the contemporary age.
The only response seems to be what the album title suggests (better to call it a "work" as it is an authentic concept of the social macrocosm zoomed onto the microcosm of internal reality): the search for spirituality (soul) within this enormous, imposing, and alienating "machine". Unfortunately, it is a title that also seems to allude to the sad awareness of the unattainable utopia it contains, but the meaning of the "Resurrection of the Oppressed" with a clear mystical-religious undertone, is precisely, in my (very limited) opinion, that of hope even inside and beyond despair.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Martyr (04:05)
what i thought was life
came to an end
born into a world
i never asked for this
ive got to get away (x4)
born into hardship
a world of destruction
suffer, bastard (x2)
ive got to get away (x4)
take me to heaven
adorn me with wings
suffer, bastard
ive got to get away (x4)
suffer, bastard...
(repeat 1st verse, 2nd verse)
ive got to get away (x4)
02 Leechmaster (03:54)
What you feel
Are your needs
All you want
Is to be loved
Pain!...Love!...Pain!
But can you give
Someone else
The same love
That you want
Pain!...Love!...Pain!
Pain!...Love!...Pain!
Come and take my pain
And soon you will see
That I will taste your pain
Then both of us can bleed
I loved you once
Now go away
I loved you once
Please stay away
Your emotions
Are out of control
A battered soul
Your love means shit
Pain!...Love!...Pain!
Pain!...Love!...Pain!
Come and take my pain
And soon you will see
That I will taste your pain
Then both of us can bleed
I loved you once
Now go away
I loved you once
Please stay away [X2]
03 Scapegoat (04:33)
Judges have decimated
Meanings of our laws
Already guilt?
Something has a flow
Wrongly accused
Blindly confused
Open your eyes
Try to realize
[Chorus:]
Don't you know
You can't see
Too damn blind
To judge me!
Wrongly accused
Blindly confused
Open your eyes
Try to realize
[Chorus]
Laws are meant to follow
But they've mislead you
Conceal their meanings
So they can suit you
Misjudged by the system
No one ever knows
No one
No one knows
No one
No one
No one knows...
Judges have decimated
Meanings of our laws
Already guilt?
Something has a flow
Wrongly accused
Blindly confused
Open your eyes
Wake up, realize!
[Chorus, repeat 3rd verse]
Scapegoat
Scapegoat
Scapegoat
Scape - Goat
Scape - Goat
04 Crisis (03:45)
You that I despise
Repentance of sorts
Death comes naturally
Not from a hated war
Repentance
Repentance of faith
Repentance of hope
Repentance of hate
Not my war
Soldiers marching on
Not my war
Soldiers marching on
On your feet!
Crisis at hand
On your feet soldier!
Crisis at hand
On your feet soldier!
On your feet motherfucker!
Crisis! Crisis! Crisis!
05 Crash Test (03:46)
Some men believe
Animals aren't seen
Testing on their minds
Testing with their lives
You can't believe
Not even percieve
Animals that die
Animals that cry
Chorus:
Crash test! So what!
Crash test! So what!
Catastrophies
To the animal species
Politically correct
On animals, to dissect?
What does it mean
When animals can dream?
Destroying a pure life
Only for a price
Repeat Chorus
Animals that die
Animals that cry
Testing on their minds
Testing with their lives (X2)
Crash! Test!
Animals that die
Animals that cry
Testing on their minds
Testing with their lives
Repeat 1st verse, Chorus
Crash!
06 Flesh Hold (02:31)
Breaking out
this stifled room
A jail cell, a steel tomb
To see the light
My mere existence
God's kill in sight
Confined in madness
Jurors hate criminal minds
They're making dates for killing time
Breaking out this stifled room
A jail cell, a steel tomb
One has to fight
For dissension
God's kill in sight
Confined in madness
Wasted life, tasted
Wasted life, tasted [X2]
Kill me!
Kill me!
Kill me!
Kill me!
So let me die
So let me die
Wasted life, tasted
Wasted life, tasted
One has to fight
For dissension
God's kill in sight
Confined in madness
Jurors hate criminal minds
They're making dates for killing time
08 Scumgrief (04:07)
Cry, cry, cry, cry
Wires around your arms
Like wires around your head
A crucifix of me
Above your bed
I've seen your wounds
That you can't hide
You bleed well
When I cry
[Chorus:]
Cry, cry, cry
Scumgrief, Scumgrief
Scumgrief, Scumgrief
Smell the rats of deviance
Coursing through your veins
Rotting faith in your self
Confined alone to decay
I've seen your wounds
That you can't hide
You bleed well
With the rat inside [X2]
[Repeat Chorus]
10 Big God / Raped Souls (02:38)
In America today, every 25 fucking seconds
someone is viciously raped, someone is brutally violated;
250 times a day, someone is murdered,
someone's life is taken,
In America; This is America, This is America,
and I love America,
I love America!
No remorse for the pain
Look into the eyes of death
Strong man cannot endure
Big god of this earth
Liar!
Big god, no god!
Take back this life
Give back this world
"Woe to you
of earth and sea"
Big god will always be
Liar!
Big god, no god!
Burn! Raped Souls:
God raped souls
Of our lives
Hammers crush all our lives
Just like clockwork
They'll crush our lives
11 Arise Above Oppression (01:51)
Rise above, rise above
Steal away to hide your shame
Rise above, rise above!
Rise above your oppression
Above the one that hates you
Above the one that lies
Above the pain that hates
Death! Fear! Rage!
Rise above your depression
Above the one that kills
Above the one that hates
Above all of the pain
Fear! Death! Rage!
Rise above, rise above
Rise above
Rise
Rise
Rise
Rise above your oppression
Above the pain and suffering
Above the one that hates you
And kills you
Through all of your life
13 Suffer Age (03:40)
Compressed youthful voices
Suffer age
Below John's floors
Spoilage
Lingering death
Gagging your fears
Dead in horror
Grizzly facial stare
Unbelievable atrocity
Hateful monstrosity
Draining scientific minds
Pathological deeds
Creator
Executionor
Heresy
God's vision destroyed
Sinister joker
Childhood dreams
Laughing corruption
Compressed youthful voices
Suffer age
Below John's floors
Spoilage
14 W.O.E. (02:33)
Caught beneath visions of hatred
Drowning fast in sounds of silence
Caught between divisions of hate
Can't breathe under this weight of existence
[Chorus:]
Too strong,
Too strong for you
Too strong,
Too strong for you
[Repeat 1st verse, Chorus]
Drowning
Drowning
Drowning
Drowning [X2]
[Repeat 1st verse, Chorus]
15 Desecrate (02:35)
Desecrate the vows within
Sanctify all your fears
Desecrate the holy church
Desecrate
Fill the abyss
With you hatred
Slaughter my child
Before your eyes
Fill the abyss
With you hatred
Slaughter my child
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Drink his blood like wine
Taste his body like bread
He's not my god
He's - Not - My - God
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Drink his blood like wine
Taste his body like bread
He's not my god
He's - Not - My - God
Not my god!
Desecrate!
Not my god!
Desecrate!
16 Escape Confusion (03:58)
From morality
A morbid animosity
Addicted to the epidemic
That deteriorates progression
Escape confusion
Escape animosity
Desperately washing away
The gore that's hidden beneath the dismay
Thoughts of eternal despair
And self hate
Escape confusion
Escape animosity
Terrorism within
Dreams become reality
Visions of hope
Attempt to escape
Attempt to escape
Attempt to escape the sickness!
Terror
Dreams become reality
Visions of hope
Attempt to escape
Attempt to escape
Attempt to escape the sickness!
Repeat 1st verse
17 Manipulation (03:29)
Your conniving words
Are childishly insane
To get what you want
You'll say anything
In your mind
You lust to control me
You lust
For control
[Chorus:]
Mold me, fold me
Mold me, fold me
My pain is your pleasure
My agony excites you
Desperate for a change
But change comes within
I'm not staying
Not around you
I'm stronger than you think
Much stronger than you
[Repeat Chorus]
Molding and folding
Lusting for control [X3]
Longing to control
Those without esteem
Ignorant pawns
Of your pathetic dreams
Dying to control
Those without esteem
Ignorant pawns
Of your pathetic dreams
Molding and folding
Lusting for control
Hatred is a tool
Thoughtlessly you use
Ruin an only friend
With misleading rules
Contain your own rage
Give yourself praise
'Cause you have no shame
With your callous game
[Repeat Chorus]
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Other reviews
By Senmayan
Burton Bell has a voice that on this first album ranges from a wickedly vicious growl to a very particular clean voice, almost like an android capable of experiencing emotions!
I’ve never heard a drummer use the double pedal in such a clean and surgical way, almost as if it were a second drum set!
