MetalSucks

In no particular order…

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Gene Hoglan: The Atomic Clock. What he can do to an otherwise ordinary or bland riff is beyond explanation. He is an ARTIST first, world’s greatest metal drummer second. Plus… confidence and a circular groove. How many times while writing with a drummer have you heard them say “There should be no drums there, it’s what the song wants”… Never?

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Okay. I started SYL in 1993 after hearing Soul Of A New Machine. I saw Fear Factory open for Sepultura with Clutch, and I remember running around the venue telling everyone: “THAT is what I want to do, except with extra chaos…”

My creative process is directly tied to my emotional development. There are some folks that make music by picking up a guitar until they have a riff that is defined by the musical roads they choose to hone. They then sculpt it into that framework and voila, Metallica, Slayer, Priest etc. I think that’s awesome, and in some ways I’m envious of that. In many cases, if you mix that with tenacity and a certain amount of talent and luck, you can sustain a decent career.

That’s not how I create, again… as it is tied to life and circumstance, my music has generally been cathartic observations of what life presents, and each new record in many ways is a reaction to the one before. So in the most blunt of terms, I make music to better understand myself as I change.

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It’s been a while since we’ve reported on the current Fear Factory drama because, well, it got boring re-hashing the same old shit over and over again just to get you guys all hot and bothered in the comments (whoops, did I just say that?). To summarize, in case you didn’t read this site missed out over the summer: Dino re-friends Burton Bell and the two start working on new music under the “Fear Factory” name, while Christian and Raymond — currently working on their Arkaea project — rightly object because Fear Factory is supposedly a four-way partnership. Lawsuits and public shit-talking ensue.

Last I checked a resolution between the two warring Fear Factions hadn’t been reached. So either the four men have settled, or Dino and Burton — let’s just call them the baby-eating Fear Faction — just don’t give a fuck. The baby-eating Fear Faction, along with latter-day FF cohorts Byron Stroud [Strapping Young Lad] and Gene Hoglan [Strapping Young Lad, Dethklok, every fucking band ever] — just announced that they have a new album called Mechanized coming out on February 9th via Candlelight Records (!?!).

The new song “Powershifter” has been making the Internet rounds all weekend; stream it below. Unsurprisingly, it sounds a lot like Fear Factory. I imagine some of you will love it and some of you will hate it; place me firmly in the “meh” camp. I loves me some Demanufcature and Obsolete, but 10 years later there are tons of metal bands out there that are way better, more interesting, and more worthy of my listening time.

-VN

As a part of goth metal OGs Type O Negative, drummer Johnny Kelley’s talents are often overshadowed by the low end sultriness and antics of bassist/frontman/nude model Peter Steele. But his graceful stickwork has been holding the band together since 1995’s October Rust, and the string of Type O albums that have come out since have stood shoulder to shoulder with the band’s prior material. Along with being Danzig’s drummer, Kelly plays in Seventh Void, a stoner/trad metal outfit with Type O Negative guitarist Kenny Hickey. The latter band released their debut on Vinnie Paul’s Big Vin Records in April. In an interview with MetalSucks, Kelly discusses Type O Negative’s future, working with Glenn Danzig, and his thoughts on modern drummers.

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Quick re-cap: first original Fear Factory members Dino Cazares and Burton C. Bell announced they were teaming up with non-original Fear Factory member Byron Stroud and never-a-Fear Factory member Gene Hoglan to start a band that would not be called Fear Factory.

Several weeks later the band announced that they would be called Fear Factory.

Now our pal Anso DF at Hipsters Out of Metal! is reporting that original Fear Factory drummer Raymond Herrera told some radio show that nu-Fear Factory can’t be called Fear Factory no’ mo’:

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Twenty days ago it was announced that Burton C. Bell and Dino Cazares would be joining forces for a new project with Gene Hoglan and Byron Stroud; at the time, I wondered why the hell what is basically a Fear Factory reunion wasn’t going to be called Fear Factory.

Well, turns out it will be called Fear Factory.

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I was never a big Fear Factory person so someone please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but did anyone ever really care about any of the members of that band who weren’t Burton C. Bell or Dino Cazares?

I ask because after about a year of speculation that the original Factory would be reuniting, it’s been announced that, yes, Bell and Cazares will now be working together again – but as a new band with a different, still to be determined name.

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If you’re not familiar with Continuum’s 33 1/3 book series, you should be. Each entry is written by a different music critic and/or journalist, and each one is devoted to the study of a single, seminal album. There’s a wide range of types of music covered by the series – everything from the Beastie Boys to The Velvet Underground – but metal hass, up ’til now, been criminally unrepresented. There are entries for albums by Guns N’ Roses and Nine Inch Nails, but those aren’t metal bands in the strictest sense and, obviously, both groups have been wholly accepted by the mainstream; there was a book covering Sabbath’s Master of Reality recently, but, weird though it may be, at this point Sabbath are pretty much as accepted and unrebellious a metal band as we’re likely to get.

So D.X. Ferris’ recently release tome on Slayer’s Reign in Blood is the series’ first honest to God (or honest to Satan?) book covering a metal album. And it’s an AWESOME read – fascinating, intelligent, informative and insightful, you’re likely to blow through it record time, and then feel depressed as you realize you’ve reached the last page. Ferris not only takes a critical look at the album, making astute observations and pointing out little musical nooks and crannies you might have never noticed even after your gazillionth spin of the classic record, but he also managed to interview everyone and anyone who was involved with the album – from the band members themselves to producer Rick Rubin to engineer Andy Wallace to cover artist Larry Carroll and a few hundred other people I’m forgetting about – as well as loads and loads of musicians and artists who are fans of the album (Henry Rollins, Tori Amos, Gary Holt, and Paul Romano among them).

After I wrote this blog about Slayer and their continuing relevance in the metal world back in June, Ferris actually e-mailed me basically just to say “thanks” for the shout-out to his book. I asked him if I could shoot him some interview questions, and luckily for us, he agreed. After the jump, read what Ferris had to say about the process of putting the book together, things he learned about both Slayer and Reign in Blood while working on the book, and the state of Slayer today.

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I mean, really. The above headline is so unfair. Lots of perfectly respectable metal musicians give lessons when they’re not touring ’cause it’s a good way to make some extra money.

Of course, those musicians tend to be talented, hard working, blue collar dudes in real metal bands. And, also, y’know, musicians.

And none of those words describe John Otto, the Limp Bizkit* skinsman/resident hobbit who is now offering drum lessons for $150-$200 a pop (depending on if you want a little alone time with him or don’t mind sharing him with someone else who thought that “Rollin’” was a good song). Having never taken a drum lesson, I have no idea if that’s a fair price or not, but if I were gonna take a drum lesson and it was gonna cost me $200, I would probably want it to be with Dave Lombardo or Gene Hoglan or Paul Bostaph or Kevin Talley or Jiminy fuckin’ Cricket, or at least, like, David Silvera.

Anyways, you can get more info here. Please book something soon and help Mr. Otto get his Ferrari out of the shop – Fred and Wes tell him the LB reunion is still at least a year off and he really, really needs that car to get laid.

-AR

*Frodo – uh, that is, Otto – is apparently also in a band called The Killer and the Star, but I think even fewer people have heard of them than have heard of Black Light Burns.