MetalSucks

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

Burton C. Bell has remained pretty quiet on the whole Fear Factory situation up until now, but the good folks at  Rock My Monkey have finally gotten him to open up and do some shit-talkin’ of his own. It’s an audio interview, but Mr. Blabbermouth has transcribed some key portions…

…which I’m not even going to re-print here. Because it’s mostly anti-climatic. But I’ll give you the short version: Bell’s side of the story is that during the mixing of the Dino-less FF offering Transgression, Christian Olde Wolbers started having an affair with the band’s manager, Christy Priske. And I guess things got pretty serious, ’cause the two are married now. Bell found Wolbers and Priske’s shitting where they eat as “completely unacceptable,” and things got worse when Priske, Wolbers and Raymond Herrera allegedly brought Bell some new business arrangement which he also disliked. And then things really fell to shit: Bell says he refused to work with Priske, Wolbers and Herrera refused to let her go and refused to reunite with Dino, and now we have all this fun mud slinging in a public forum.

But here’s the part of the interview I actually found really interesting, and this part I will re-print verbatim:

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Anthrax may have stolen this week’s metal gossip thunder, but we’re always happy to re-hash old feuds for entertainment’s sake here at MetalSucks. The latest news had Dino Cazares taking a shot at drummer Raymond Herrera’s playing abilities, while Burton Bell has for the most part taken the high road and remained mum. Herrera and Christian Olde Wolbers both fired back this week, and here’s Wolbers’ latest:

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Oddly enough, the baby sandwich is not the poorly Photoshopped part of this picture.

This is Ray Herrera from a recent interview*:

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Divine Heresy get a lot of somewhat undeserved hate: calling the band out for not being very good would be like calling this writer out for not hitting .458 for the Dodgers. This isn’t to say that the band necessarily deserve defense; in fact, I can’t imagine a solid argument for their existence. But their brand of technical nu-deathcore works surprisingly well, in that it’s not so much awful as it is awfully bland. And while perhaps it’s not fair to commend a band for not being as terrible as they could be, it’s not fair to decry them for not being amazing. If you were expecting them to be a slightly edgier Fear Factory, Bringer of Plagues, their latest album, delivers exactly what you’d think: 42 minutes (strangely enough, to the second) of surgically precise mechanical riffs, big yet terribly obvious grooves, pretty bad nu-metalcore vocals, and nothing particularly memorable.

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“Will someone please tell Dino that his lunch has arrived?”

Holy shit. This is officially my favorite feud of the year.

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Sometimes we don’t want to face the truth about a certain situation. But sooner or later, you always have to be honest with yourself, or face a big ol’ ass whoopin’.

The reunited-but-not-really Fear Factory, which features original members Dino Cazares and Burton C. Bell but NOT Christian Olde Wolbers or Raymond Herrera, has apparently had to cancel not only what was to be their debut performance in Spain last night, but an entire German tour due to the ongoing legal battle over the band’s name.

Really, you have to wonder how the fuck it got this far that the group booked an entire tour without anyone checking if they had the legal rights to the name. Here’s my best guess about how the conversation between Dino Cazares and Burton C. Bell must’ve went:

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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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