Fear Factory
Soul of a New Machine

THE REVIEW

Debut album for Fear Factory, a band capable of greatly revolutionizing the extreme metal ethos, authors of one of the genre's most important albums, the following "Demanufacture". The band included Burton C. Bell on vocals, Dino Cazares on guitar, Andrew Shives on bass, and Raymond Herrera on drums. The great asset of each Fear Factory member is their ability to personalize their performance to the utmost: for example, 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! Cazares' riffs are another of Fear Factory's trademarks, now widely imitated. Absence of solos, almost militaristic rhythms, from a "machine-dominated world" which is the vision proposed by the group in every album to varying degrees. Not to mention the true human machine of the group, I'm talking about the drummer, the robot Herrera, whose performance I also enjoyed live (oh). 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!

This album differs from the later ones, the sound is not yet fully focused and a bit raw, but the brutal death or better yet post-death with some industrial elements that Fear Factory presents in this album already has a strong personality and Bell's robotic voice is already well present in this album! From the opening "Martyr", which made me jump out of my chair the first time I heard it, due to the singer's ferocious growl, I who was used to the group's recent productions. Also noteworthy are the following "Leechmaster", "Scapegoat", a classic of theirs in which some future elements of the group are already visible (sound technologization, Bell's robotic voice, half-human android chorus), although the brutal death matrix is still evident, which however makes the work very enjoyable, perhaps excessively long and dispersive (there are as many as 17 tracks), but we must keep in mind that we are facing a debut and moreover very personal and interesting.

The technological verb mixed with brutality, continues in the following songs as shown by "Life Blind" which in terms of sound is among the closest to "Demanufacture". Noteworthy is the noise and complete noise of "Natividad" and the provocative and accusatory intro towards American society (to demonstrate that even in their themes Fear Factory distanced themselves from many extreme groups) in "Big God", where Bell proclaims:

"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!"

The best was yet to come, but this album still retains all the charm that only a debut album and a young and angry band can have, that suburban Orwellian world atmosphere!