Fear Factory are active again, apparently, and by “Fear Factory” I mean Dino Cazares and three other ringers. Cos they’re not a band any more, and if any band has ever disappointed me by being, you know, kind of naked about how being in a band is as much if not more about business as it is art, it’s these pricks. (Kiss are far more obvious about it, I know, but I was never a fan so they couldn’t disappoint me in the same way.)
FF’s somewhat complicated history is summed up on Wiki, so read that. Suffice to say I was a big admirer of Demanufacture and Obsolete at the end of the 90s, and was a bit taken aback by their breakup in 2002 and the revelation that Dino Cazares was apparently a bit of a cunt. They came back as a trio without him (adding Byron Stroud on bass) and muddled on for a few more years, until apparently something like this happened:
Burton C. Bell: I don’t want to make horrible music like this any more.
Christian Olde Wolbers/Raymond Herrera: Whatever. We’ll form a new band without you.
Bell: Hey me and Dino are friends again for some reason and we’re forming a new band.
W/H: That’s nice.
Bell: And we’re making more of that horrible music I allegedly didn’t want to make.
W/H: That’s… nice.
Bell: And we’ve got Gene Hoglan!
W/H: Damn, that’s not bad at all.
Cazares: And we’re calling it Fear Factory and neither of you two cunts are invited.
W/H: Hmm. Excuse us, we have lawyers we need to speak to…
This is what B. and C. had to say to Metal Hammer at the time:
Weird how that rapport with Byron Stroud never extended to actually letting him play on any of the records the band made when he was part of it. As for Dino asking how anyone could pass up playing with Gene Hoglan, Dino did precisely that himself on their 2012 album The Industrialist, where he replaced one of metal’s most acclaimed drummers with a drum machine and apparently didn’t even tell him the band was making the album (Hoglan claimed he knew nothing about it until news of its completion came out). No wonder both of them quit the band after that…
Anyway, Wolbers’ lawyers eventually managed to throw some spanners into the works, and things got complicated with B. & C. and friends recording a new album during the legal strife, then Bell declaring the album was ready to come out and Cazares declaring there was no new album at all, then that it did exist and would be coming out in 2021, whereupon Bell decided “fuck the fucking lot of you” and quit the band, by which time he apparently hadn’t spoken to Cazares in years. Whereupon, ironically, Wolbers gave Cazares his blessing to carry on the band.
Honestly, FUCK these guys. Like I said, I liked those second and third albums quite a lot back in the day, they were a big part of me getting into more extreme metal at that time (I didn’t actually listen to a lot of the stuff then), so FF were kind of important to me. And they’ve let me down terribly as people almost ever since. I mean, I’ve heard at least some of the stuff they made after the initial 2002 breakup, indeed I quite liked some of the songs on Archetype, but I can’t get excited about them any more. They’ve been too obvious about being a business rather than a band. Which, really, is what most bands become once they pass a certain point. Most bands aren’t really bands, they don’t actually form and perform as organically and naturally as we the listener and fan might like to think. They become businesses.
But generally they don’t make that overly obvious. I suppose it’s like a sort of kayfabe, trying to act like the music outweighs other considerations like money and fame and the possibility that the band members don’t actually want to be in the same room as each other but they have to keep the money machine going… and Fear Factory have spent at least the last fifteen years shitting on that illusion and themselves in the process. I mean, I don’t need my favourite artists to all be charming and delightful sweethearts—some of them are fucking terrible people whose art I nonetheless enjoy—but FF have been too transparent over the years for me to still give a shit.
Anyway, Dino’s found a new singer, who has one of the least enviable tasks in heavy music; Burton’s voice was nothing if not a signature part of the band’s sound that won’t be replaced easily. Got a new drummer, too; the guy who replaced Gene Hoglan rather mysteriously disappeared from their latest tour due to “scheduling conflicts” and his fill-in is now the permanent drummer. Good luck to messrs Silvestro & Webber in their new roles, cos I feel like they may be lucky to hold onto them…
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