Fear Factory
The Industrialist

If you want to indulge in a binge of Fear Factory, go listen to the unsurpassable “Demanufacture” or the more complex “Obsolete”, and you will be pleasantly devastated by their blend of thrash and industrial metal, and considering these albums date back to 1998 and even earlier, you will appreciate their genius and greatness even more. Period, the review could end right here.

Fear Factory is a consistent band, like AC/DC, like Iron Maiden, but this attitude also has its pros and cons.

If you put “The Industrialist” in your CD player, you probably already know what to expect: electronic and synthetic sounds, precise, relentless, fast, and hyper-triggered drumming, layers of distorted and compressed palm-muting with no concession to any kind of solo, and vocal lines that range from the fiercest growl to more melodic and “human” openings.

Once again, it's the Cazares-Bell duo that dominates, while the drummer has stayed away from the skins, limiting himself to helping the guitarist program a drum machine, which we find throughout the album; if you are already accustomed to the factory of fear, you will not find many differences, since from Demanufacture the sounds have always been very non-acoustic.

And off we go! The title track opens the festivities, with a successful and very unsettling intro that then gives way to the classic double bass/guitar duet, driving and with the right punch; the subsequent “Recharger” and “New Messiah” make way for those melodic openings I mentioned earlier, allowing Burton Bell to express himself in clean vocals that create a nice contrast with the violence of the riffs.

“Difference Engine” is also great, showing the band's more hardcore side, while the last two tracks are “instrumental”, perhaps more exercises in electronic music than actual songs. In between, there are some tracks that in my opinion are a bit “fillers”, which did not convince me much, and do not diverge from the style of this “The Industrialist.”

Fear Factory is back! They will surely smash it live, as they have already proven even in the years when Dino Cazares' absence made them slightly “falter”; for the rest, we already know what to expect.

I repeat, an album consistent with the band's history, a concept album still centered on the man-machine relationship, and a good opportunity for those who adore Fear Factory to listen to something new. If you want it, here is “The Industrialist”, but for all those who have never heard the band before, the first 3 albums are highly recommended!