Fear Factory

Fear Factory
With seven full-length albums and a number of popular singles and remixes, Fear Factory has been ruling the metal world for quite a while now. Their sound proved to be enormously influential on the metal scene from the mid-90s and onwards.

This American heavy metal band was formed in 1989, disbanded in 2002 and then striked again with more power and energy. Over the course of time, the band has evolved from a succession of styles.

They have steadily pioneered a combination of the styles of death metal, groove metal, thrash metal and industrial metal for which they have earned accolades and are still making music to serve their fans.

The band traces its roots in an outfit formed by guitarist Dino Cazares and drummer Raymond Herrera in California in 1989. Burton C. Bell joined them as a vocalist and they started out under the name Ulceration that was later changed to Fear Factory in 1990.

Their initial sound included the elements of death metal, early British industrial metal, industrial music and grindcore besides holding the conservative extreme metal approach; that confirmed the bands wide spread appeal on music audience from all over the world.

The band started making demo recordings that contained the flavor of early works of Napalm Death and Godflesh blended with death metal sound of the band. They contributed two songs to the L.A. Death Metal Compilation in 1990 and played their first show in the same year and earned widespread popularity just after their first musical outing.

Their debut album titled Concrete was recorded in 1991 in Blackie Lawless' studios and was re-released in 2002 as Soul of a New Machine, because of their tiff with the producer Robinson.

The album contained a classic line-up of songs and is regarded as the band's magnum opus of heavy metal classic. It was certified Gold in Australia by ARIA and Silver in the UK by the BPI.

Fear Factorys second and third albums were titled Demanufacture and Obsolete respectively that has their trademark death metal style. Both the albums contained related concepts. Digimortal, their fourth studio album, was released on April 24, 2001 by Roadrunner Records.

It was also a concept album and is considered a sequel to Obsolete, and the final part of a trilogy. In March 2002, Fear Factory disbanded because of some internal disputes, but they later reformed that year without Cazares and have added bassist, Byron Stroud.

Their fifth studio album, Archetype was released on April 20, 2004 through Liquid 8. It was also issued in a Limited Edition Digipak with a bonus DVD. This was followed by Transgression in 2005 that included guest appearances by Billy Gould and Mark Morton.

Fear Factory is famous for their heavy use of science fiction elements in their songs and concept albums. Transgression followed that direction and this experimental and atypical effort also contained elements of pop music and progressive metal.

Fear Factor has made their mark not only on records but also on concerts. The band has toured with many important bands and artists like Black Sabbath, Pantera, Iron Maiden, Slayer, System of a Down, Megadeth, Dream Theater, Mastodon, Misery Index and Rammstein.

They had performed at three Ozzfests and the inaugural of Gigantour. With many hit singles in the US Mainstream Rock Top 40 and hit albums in the Billboard Top 40, 100 and 200, the band is rocking today like never before.