Due to circumstances beyond our control / due to an unexpected situation / due to unforseen problems, Fear Factory vocalist Burton C. Bell’s ambient/experimental band Ascension of the Watchers has been forced to cancel their European tour. Oh, wait… what’s that, the band actually gave a concrete reason for their cancellation? From the AOtW MySpace blog:

My dear friends, it is with great sadness that I inform all of you that the Ascension of The Watchers tour that was scheduled for November 27 – December 14 had to be cancelled due to the lack of ticket pre-sales.

In these troubling economic times, the risk of the tour failing was far too great for all parties involved. After much consideration, canceling the tour for this season was the best course of action.

Well paint my neck red and call me John McCain; Burton Bell actually manned up and told the truth! That’s a good reason indeed for a tour cancellation. Now excuse me, I’ve got more press releases to read containing vague and nebulous reasons for tour cancellations.

-VN

PS: AOtW’s Numinosum was a pretty good album; read my review here, and then check out my interview with Burton.

A few weeks ago I was offered the opportunity to sit down and talk with Ascension of Watchers and ex-Fear Factory frontman Burton C. Bell, a chance I jumped at right away. Bell was quite the gentleman, sitting through a long interview and answering my questions about the new Ascension of the Watchers album Numinosum (read my review here), his past career with Fear Factory, working with Al Jourgensen of Ministry, and a whole lot of other topics. The full chat transcript, after the jump.*

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The latest Blabbermouth [via Rock N Roll Experience] news sure to cause an uproar: Burton Bell just gave an interview where he calls Deftones front man Chino Moreno “a dick,” Slipknot’s Joey Jordison a “sloppy” drummer, and asserts that the last few Ozzy albums have been full of “shitty music.”

And, hey, you know what? Horns up to Bell for being honest. Because while I don’t think Jordison is a sloppy drummer and I don’t know Chino well enough to classify him as a dick or otherwise, but Ozzy certainly has been making shitty music for at least three studio albums now. And why the fuck should we fault Bell for speaking his mind? It’s better than the usual being diplomatic bull crap.

Ironically enough, the last time I remember someone this prominent in the metal world really speaking out like this was Chino’s infamous Revolver interview in the summer of ’03, when he slagged every band he was about to hit the road with for that year’s Summer Sanitarium tour (including Metallica). What goes around comes around, I s’pose…

-AR

Fear Factory singer Burton C. Bell is finally back with a new project, Ascension of the Watchers, along with John Bechdel (Killing Joke, Ministry) and Edu Mussi (Still Life Decay). As other Fear Factory members have gone forth and prospered in the metal world — Dino Cazares with Divine Heresy, and Christian Olde Wolbers in the producer’s chair for Mnemic and Threat Signal — Bell has been relatively quiet in recent years, and has taken a decidedly different path than his former Fear Factory brothers.

Bell’s silence is about to end, relatively speaking, with Numinosum, the debut from Ascension of the Watchers, due February 19. Numinosum is Fear Factory’s ambient alter-ego, with its atmospherics and electronics representing everything Fear Factory was not. Imagine the filler tracks on a Tool album, full of samples, atmospheric keyboards, and whispers. Picture the brooding, dark, tripped-out explorations of the soul that have always made up the majority of Nine Inch Nails’ album tracks. Now imagine those on top of beats reminiscent of a darker, dirtier Portishead — and you should have a pretty good idea of what Numinosum sounds like.

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