Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 110

ARTIST:  Fear Factory
ORIGIN:  Los Angeles, CA (United States)
TITLE:  Obsolete
LABEL:  Roardrunner Records
YEAR:  1998
GENRE:  Groove Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Edgecrusher"
NOTES:  This one was a bit more stripped-down than Fear Factory's prior album.  It has taken out more of the death metal elements that were present in the band's sound when they first came out.  At this point they were almost solely a groove metal band with some industrial influences.  Nevertheless, I still like this album quite a bit.  Burton Bell's clean vocals sound terrific mixed with his rougher style.  I still come back to this one occasionally.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 84

ARTIST:  Fear Factory
ORIGIN:  Los Angeles, CA (United States)
TITLE:  Remanufacture
LABEL:  Roadrunner Records
YEAR:  1997
GENRE:  Industrial/Groove Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Machines of Hate (Self Bias Resistor)"
NOTES:  I will be honest.  I have no idea why I still have this.  This is a remix album of the breakthrough of Fear Factory.  It is much more of a techno remix album and the songs tend to drag on and on.  As such, it is not one I pull out very often.  And I usually don't enjoy it that much when I do.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 70

ARTIST:  Fear Factory
ORIGIN:  Los Angeles, CA (United States)
TITLE:  Demanufacture
LABEL:  Roadrunner Records
YEAR:  1995
GENRE:  Industrial Metal/Groove Metal
FAVORITE SONG:  "Body Hammer"
NOTES:  I still think this is the best album Fear Factory has ever released.  And I do not think that I am alone in this.  I first heard Fear Factory on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack as I recall.  I liked the song okay, but it was not something that I was incredibly excited about.  I heard a few other songs then picked this up.  I actually have the digipak reissue with a bunch of bonus tracks.

Cataloguing My Metal Collection Pt. 16

ARTIST:  Various
ORIGIN:  Various
TITLE:  Monsters of Rock Vol. 3: Molten Metal
LABEL:  Priority Records
YEAR:  1994
GENRE:  Various
FAVORITE SONG:  Fear Factory: "Scapegoat"
NOTES:  Another compilation that I picked up early on.  This one featured songs by Motorhead, Flotsam and Jetsam, and Fear Factory that I eventually checked out.  It also featured White Zombie and Aversion.  There were some non-metal bands such as L.A. Guns, Mudhoney, Kiss, and Biohazard as well.

My 100 Favorite Metal Bands Pt. 43: Fear Factory

Fear Factory is a band that I first got into early on in my formative years as a metal head. They got some play on the local hard rock radio station and appeared on a couple of soundtracks that I liked. So I checked them out. Their earliest material is a perfect blend of death metal and industrial metal. Fear Factory's singer Burton C. Bell is also largely credited with being a pioneer in the clean/extreme vocal style. Bell's voice was the first thing that stuck out to me, but Dino Cazares's guitar work was also top-notch for the style. Though their material after Obsolete is hit and miss, they are still an important band in my metal history. They were also only the second band that I liked enough to get a t-shirt, after Sepultura.

FAVORITE ALBUM: DEMANUFACTURE

Year in Metal: 1992

Here's where we start to see traditional and thrash metal fading and death and black metal rising.

ALICE IN CHAINS: DIRT
I am a huge fan of Alice in Chains. One of the earliest groups that got me interested in metal. Alice in Chains is wrongfully lumped in with grunge because it came from the same geographical area. By the Seattle connection, it's surprising that groups like Metal Church, Nevermore, and Queensryche were never called grunge. Alice in Chains owes a massive debt to groups like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple in their music, definitely metal.

CANNIBAL CORPSE: TOMB OF THE MUTILATED
I've been debating about Cannibal Corpse albums to put in here for a couple of posts now. This one gets the call because it includes the famous song "Hammer Smashed Face" which was featured in a scene in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. This was a very early exposure to death metal for me. Cannibal Corpse essentially laid out the framework for death metal for years to come: heavy riffs, pounding drums, deep guttural vocals, and gory lyrics. Bands have been copying the formula ever since.

DANZIG: III-HOW THE GODS KILL
Another band I have been trying to get into these posts for awhile. Danzig is an enigma. His musical roots lay in punk (The Misfits are still the only punk band I listen to) and 1950's rock and roll. Yet he puts out very good gothic, doomy metal albums such as this one. Yes, he still reverts back to his other roots, but the metal is undeniable. "Dirty Black Summer" is a great song, and the H.R. Giger art adds to the mystique of the album.

DEICIDE: LEGION
This is occult death metal kicked up to an insane speed. No one is quite sure just what the hell Glen Benton is roaring about, but with these songs, these riffs, and this dark, unholy atmosphere, who the hell cares? This is Deicide's second album and it set the early high mark for this band's releases. They descended into mediocrity for a long time immediately after this album, so this is still the early favorite. Still, like Cannibal Corpse, Deicide is often imitated and never really surpassed. Truly evil death metal.

FEAR FACTORY: SOUL OF A NEW MACHINE
Fear Factory quite possibly originated the clean/harsh vocal style mix. They also brought industrial influences into death metal. All that and this is one absolutely kickass album. It does tend to drag near the end, but the beginning is mindblowing. It's hard to imagine now, but this album created major waves when it was released. No one had heard anything quite like Fear Factory. Death metal with clean vocals and industrial influences, what a concept.

Honorable Mentions: Black Sabbath: Dehumanizer, Blind Guardian: Somewhere Far Beyond, Bolt Thrower: The IVth Crusade, Dream Theater: Images and Words, Faith No More: Angel Dust, Iced Earth: Night of the Stormrider, Immortal: Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism, Iron Maiden: Fear of the Dark, Megadeth: Countdown to Extinction, Pantera: Vulgar Display of Power, Testament: The Ritual, W.A.S.P.: The Crimson Idol

Bands that formed in 1992: Cruachan, Edguy, Gorgoroth, Graveworm, Machine Head, Mourning Beloveth, Moonspell, Necrophagist.

5 Important Bands, 1 Genre Pt. 3: Death Metal

I have not done one of these in a very long time. To refresh memories or, for new readers, to explain this, these are five bands that have helped me become interested in this genre. Not all of these bands are technically death metal, or still death metal, whatever the case may be. But these bands have influenced me enough into looking more deeply into death metal.

CANNIBAL CORPSE
The first death metal band I was ever aware of was Cannibal Corpse. As many of you know, Cannibal Corpse had a cameo in the first Ace Ventura movie. They played "Hammer Smashed Face" in that clip. I was in seventh grade when I saw that and I had no fucking clue what the hell they were (it was also my first date). I was in awe of the vocal style. It was the heaviest thing I had ever heard. At that point, I still had not really started listening to metal so I didn't think much more of them. Later, they appeared on a tribute album to Black Sabbath that I got and one of my friends loaned me his Ace Ventura soundtrack, which I still have because he died in a car accident before I had a chance to give it back to him.

Cannibal Corpse was probably the first real death metal band I ever listened to, but it would be quite awhile before I started picking up their albums. I liked them when I heard them on various artist compilations and the rare times I heard them on TV or radio, but never really bought any albums until after law school. I have no idea why that is to this day. Cannibal Corpse was the first death metal band I ever heard and was the impetus for me looking into the actual genre.

SEPULTURA
Although Cannibal Corpse was the first real death metal band I started looking into, Sepultura's Morbid Visions was the first album in my collection that could be reasonably considered a death metal album. Sepultura is much more of a thrash metal band, but in their early days, they were heavier than virtually everything else out there. All of the requirements for death metal were present on Morbid Visions, heavy riffs, deep and harsh vocals, and an evil atmosphere. This album helped pave the way for both death metal and black metal. This album was initially disappointing to me as I was originally into their later stuff with Max in ninth grade. Now, it's one of my favorite Sepultura albums.

FEAR FACTORY
Fear Factory is a band who used to be more of a death metal band. Prior to their industrial groove metal, Fear Factory played more of an industrial-sounding death metal. They also are one of first bands to experiment with both clean and harsh vocals on their albums. Fear Factory was an early extreme metal band that I got into at around the same time that I was getting into Sepultura. The harsh death growls on their albums helped serve as a gateway into listening to more and more bands who utilized similar vocal tricks. Demanufacture is still a favorite album.

CELTIC FROST
Celtic Frost was a major influence on pretty much all genres of extreme metal over the years. I first heard Celtic Frost on a various artists compilation and then owned a tribute album. On that tribute album were bands from many different metal genres including death metal bands Sadistic Intent, Grave, Slaughter, and more. Their bass-heavy slower thrash riffs had a major influence on death metal. Many death metal bands have covered tracks by Celtic Frost.

DARK TRANQUILLITY
The melodic death metal band that rises above almost all others was a major gateway into the death metal style without being overly harsh or gory. I started picking up albums from this band early in college. From that point on, my interest in death metal exploded. The band utilized harsh vocals, but accompanied that with melody.

That takes us into my college years. It still wasn't until after law school that I started picking up a lot of death metal albums. As a poor college and law school student, I did not have the money. However, after getting my first job as a lawyer, my CD collection boomed and I started getting albums from Death, Obituary, Morbid Angel, Entombed, Dismember, and more. The five bands I listed formed the core of my death metal listening habits. I filled in the gaps as soon as I could.

Random Thoughts: Remix Albums?

A few years back, remixes of major pop songs were everywhere. They often bore little to no resemblance to the original version. It was often a means for producers to fit as many hip hop and pop artists into a song as possible. Mariah Carey became infamous for remix videos in which she was nothing more than eye candy while a truckload of rappers performed during one of her so-called songs.

Metal was not immune to the remix phenomenon. It was particularly lead by industrial-minded metal groups such as White Zombie and Fear Factory. There have been other bands that jumped on the bandwagon, but these two were the leaders. So we can all blame them for one of the more regrettable trends in metal during the 1990's.

I somehow managed to acquire four of these atrocities, with varying levels of badness for one reason or another. At least metal remixes bear at least a slight resemblance to the original version.

WHITE ZOMBIE: SUPERSEXY SWINGIN' SOUNDS
This was the first remix album I owned. It's a remix of the Astro Creep: 2000 album. I think I wanted it because it had "I'm Your Boogie Man" on it, a song previously only available on some soundtrack or other. Of course I didn't realize that this would be a remix as well. I think I might listen to this album once a year or something.

FEAR FACTORY: REMANUFACTURE
This is a remix album of the Demanufacture album. I listen to this even less than the White Zombie remix album. I think I bought this because I thought it was a new album. How naive I was. They made the songs significantly longer and boring as hell. This is an excruciating listening experience at longer than an hour.

FIGHT: MUTATIONS
This is an EP that features two halves. The first half is live performances of songs from the Fight album War of Words, including one old Judas Priest song. The second half features remixes. This one isn't so bad, mostly because it's short and the songs are somewhat enjoyable.

FEAR FACTORY: FEAR IS THE MINDKILLER
This may have been the first remix album in metal, a remix of Fear Factory's Soul of a New Machine. I got this in a double CD set with the aforementioned album. There are only five tracks on it and they're reasonably short. That's the only thing making this okay.

So, yeah. I don't intentionally buy these anymore at all. Actually, I don't really remember any remix albums being released lately. No big loss there. I would have posted pictures of these things, but I don't want to encourage these types of releases.

My Metal History Pt. 5: The College Years

I started college right when nu-metal was exploding. It was hard to avoid listening to some of that stuff, and indeed most of my early concert experiences were going to see nu-metal bands like Sevendust, Disturbed, Static-X, Godhead, Staind, Cold, and Rob Zombie (although Rob did play several White Zombie songs as he continues to do). The unfortunate thing was that nu-metal was unavoidable and did make it into lots of traditional heavy metal magazines. It was tough to know quite what to think of the genre, but it flamed out spectacularly in recent years.

I admit it: I did listen to some nu-metal. But I was always a little ambivalent towards a lot of the groups. Looking back, I realize that I was always cautious about the music due to the fact that I did not like listening to nu-metal albums all the way through. I would often have tracks that I would skip. My metal albums were not like that. That, to me, was the principal difference. Metal music was created with the goal of putting out quality albums. Nu-metal was created with the goal of making money.

Musically, there were differences that I noticed as well. Metal was about the riffs. The guitar was a melodic instrument. Nu-metal used down-tuned guitar riffs and utilized the guitar as more of a rhythmic instrument. The vocals were the melody in nu-metal.

Now that I have explained that whole sordid affair, let's look into the metal that I was listening to at the time:

Fear Factory was a band that began to make waves at the time nu-metal was getting off the ground, although their metal roots were far more apparent. That was a band that I enjoyed quite a bit and was the second metal band of whom I bought a shirt.

My enjoyment of Iron Maiden soared. I really don't remember quite when that happened. All I know is that I owned two albums in high school and I suddenly discovered how great that band was and bought five or six more. I even reviewed the most recent album Brave New World for my History of Rock Music class for the review paper assignment. Yes that was a class, yes I got an A on the assignment, and yes I got an A in the class (I was known as the Curve Killer in that class as the professor would curve the tests up to give the student with the highest grade on the test a 100%, the problem was, I almost never missed any questions on the tests).

I bought Dissection's Storm of the Light's Bane through a bookstore. I had never heard anything like it. It was dark, cold, and hostile, but I wanted to hear more bands like it. Unfortunately, it took quite a bit of searching to find anything.

It was in college that I discovered Opeth and Dark Tranquillity, going to Homer's one early evening on Halloween. That directly lead me to find albums by groups like Emperor, Moonspell, In Flames, Meshuggah, and more.

Slayer became one of my favorite bands when I received two of their albums as Christmas presents. I had owned one album previously, which I also bought while in late high school/early college. From that Christmas, I was obsessed with the band though. They still rank as one of my favorite thrash metal bands.

I also still listened to a lot of the bands I had been listening to previously: Metallica, Megadeth (even though both bands were putting out disappointing albums), Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, and more. The next leap would not occur until law school.

Fear Factory Dispute

Another day, another band in legal troubles. Sort of.

Fear Factory is a band that blended industrial metal and death metal, at least on their earlier material. Later they continued to blend styles but chose to blend industrial and groove metal. They were fairly successful in the mid to late 1990's. Demanufacture and Obsolete are particularly good albums, possibly even classics. But, the band had some personnel problems.

Guitarist Dino Cazares left the band in 2002. At this time, bassist Christian Olde Wolbers became the guitarist and Byron Stroud of Strapping Young Lad joined the band to play bass. Burton C. Bell and Raymond Herrera remained with the band as vocalist and drummer respectively.

Fast forward a few years. Bell and Cazares have reconciled their differences and want to form a new band. This band's name is going to be Fear Factory. They also will have Stroud and drummer Gene Hoglan (rent-a-drummer, most known for time with Dark Angel). However, Herrera who is also a founding member, never officially left or was kicked out of the band. He and Wolbers still claim to be members of Fear Factory. The new band started by Bell and Cazares originally was not going to be called Fear Factory so it is, in essence, a new band. At least according to Herrera. Herrera and Wolbers claim they were never consulted about anything and they cannot be kept out of the mix if Bell and Cazares start a new band and call it Fear Factory.

I have said several times before that if the founding members (there are three still involved here: Cazares, Bell, and Herrera) leave voluntarily, they no longer have a say in what is going on. The real issue here is whether in fact Bell left Fear Factory to start a new band with Cazares, who left in 2002, Stroud and Hoglan. Stroud does not have any say as he is not a founding member in Fear Factory. Hoglan was never in Fear Factory before. If Bell left Fear Factory (Wolbers and Herrera) to start a new band, which by all accounts he did, then the name Fear Factory is still held by Herrera. Initially when news of Bell and Cazares reuniting came out, the name of the band was still up in the air. This shows that, at least at first, the band intended to start out new. Of course Bell and Cazares don't see it that way.

At any rate, I see a settlement check coming to Herrera.