Fear Factory were one of the most original and innovative metal bands to emerge in the nineties, fusing industrial beats and brutal, mechanical guitar riffs with synthesizers and vocals encompassing influences ranging from death metal to eighties goth rock. After twelve years and four albums vocalist Burton C. Bell quit the band in 2002 due to internal line up problems and it seemed Fear Factory were no more, a loss mourned by fans world wide. Fear Factory has now reformed. Guitarist Dino Cazares is no longer part of the band and bassist Christian Olde Wolbers has taken his place on guitar in an unusual line up reshuffle. Byron Stroud from Strapping Young Lad has been recruited on bass and the rejuvenated band are set to release their fifth album ‘Archetype’ in May. Fear Factory has started 2004 with a bang, coming to Australia as the mystery band on The Big Day Out and returning only a few weeks later to tour with Korn and Static X.

Frankenbok are a Melbourne metal band signed to Roadrunner’s local roster under the Dark Carnival label. They have also had a recent line up change, parting ways with vocalist Adam Glynn and bringing in Adam B. Metal to help complete their new album, Blood Oath, featuring a more aggressive and down to earth sound.

Frankenbok guitarist Scott Lang has long been a fan of Fear Factory, citing them as a major influence on his playing and musical development. When Burton C. Bell had a spare hour before the Melbourne show with Korn, Scott had a chance to delve into the inner workings of Fear Factory and discuss the ups and downs of playing in a band. Australian Musician’s James O’Toole was present to record the conversation and throw in a couple of questions for good measure.

Scott Lang: How do you find the Australian bands you’ve played with?

Burton C. Bell: They’re cool, I remember a long time ago having Shihad (NZ-Ed) open for us, plus Segression, and Allegiance from Perth. Tourettes is a band I’m just learning about, Christbait were cool. Blood Duster, Superheist, The Hard Ons…. so many cool bands really. Then there were the bands we never toured with, like The Birthday Party. I was a big fan of them, but they’re way old school.

Lang: A lot of bands rave about the Big Day Out Tour…

Bell: It’s the best festival tour I’ve ever done. I thought that back in ‘97 when we did it. Doing it again, I still think it is the best festival tour ever. It’s handled really well.

Lang: I heard Cyberwaste at the Big Day Out, it’s pretty brutal stuff!

Bell: I call it mature brutality. It’s focused, it definitely has an impact, it definitely has meaning. I love it, it makes more sense to me. We’re not experimenting any more, just doing what Fear Factory does best - heavy, brutal shit. We’ve gone through all the experimentation on albums like Demanufacture, the remix album, and Obsolete. Digimortal I was never really happy with. When we were doing it I wasn’t into it. On this album we’re all into it.

Lang: What was the song writing process like on Archetype?

Bell: It was all up to Raymond and Christian. I wasn’t involved in the music writing. Raymond would write his beats on a drum machine and he would tap out the most insane beat with his fingers, then try and learn how to play it. He was laughing after he wrote “Slave Labour”, the first song on the new album. He was like,‘How the hell am I going to play this?’ (laughs) Then Christian would put guitar over it. Christian would focus on the drum pattern and try to play the riffs. I think they really stretched out with their parts and captured something incredible.

Lang: Did you have any specific goal about the kind of album you wanted to write?

Bell: Raymond would just write some crazy beats and say, ‘Let’s see what I can do this time.’ Depending on how he felt Raymond might try and write something slower or more moderately driven, or write something really fast, depending on how he was feeling that day. When the guitars were on it they would pass me a CD and then we’d do the vocals.

Lang: Did Christian feel much pressure switching to guitar?

Bell: On the demo I don’t think he felt any pressure. At that point in time we hadn’t really figured out the line up and what we were going to do. To find a guitar player who understands how Fear Factory works and how much big a part Raymond plays in the riff ideas would have been hard. If we brought in another guitar player they would have wanted to do their own thing, especially if they’re well known, so we said, ‘Christian, why don’t you play guitar?’ Christian was initially a guitar player before he played bass so he said, ‘Yeah I guess I could play guitar, that would be good’. Then we just had to find a bass player. I think Christian just wanted to be sure he was going to be tight with Raymond and it was going to sound good. He could already play the songs on bass, so it’s not that different. I think the only pressure came from himself. He doesn’t want to let us down and he wants to put on a good show. I think he likes playing guitar. It’s a little lighter than the bass and there’s a little more freedom, I think he has more fun doing it, actually.

Lang: Fear Factory have always set benchmarks for production, every album sounds massive…

Bell: This one’s the best yet. Sonically it’s there, it’s got everything. Christian did four tracks of guitars and two tracks of bass. He knew how his guitar needed to sound and with the right engineer you can get the exact sound you want. We mastered it with Howie Weinberg at Masterdisc in New York. That guy has done Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets. He did Public Enemy Fear of a Black Planet, Deftones and Beastie Boys. He just gives it more of what it needs.

Lang: What sort of music inspired you to get into a band?

Bell: I just loved music. I was in one other band before Fear Factory, called Hateface. I moved to LA and a friend of mine said he was starting a band and asked if I wanted to try out on vocals. We were into the same music so when I was listening to the music I just put my own vibe to it. When I started singing I was into Soundgarden and Nirvana, Fields of the Nephilim, Sisters of Mercy and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, David Bowie and Black Sabbath, a broad spectrum. I loved all those bands for the music and the vocals so I was very inspired by all types of music. Guys would sing and guys would scream so absorbing all of these inspirations I created my own identity. When I first started in a band I couldn’t sing. I still can’t sing really. I don’t consider myself a singer, I consider myself a vocalist. To me there’s a difference. A vocalist is someone who can project themselves. I project my emotions.

Lang: A lot of vocalists have had training on how to project their voices and how to breathe properly…

Bell: I’ve never had training like that. I guess I’m lucky, it’s a gift I have. People ask me how I go from a heavy voice to singing and I don’t know how I do it. I started off imitating a character from that cartoon Inspector Gadget, the Claw - ‘I’ll get you Gadget’ (spoken in a growl). I’d try to sing like that, but with a Napalm Death, Carcass, Fields of the Nephilim and Sisters of Mercy kind of vibe.

Lang: Do you do any warm ups before a show?

Bell: I try and do some warm ups, some scales and some stretches to get my lungs working.

Lang: Your vocal style has become quite influential…

Bell: People say that, but I don’t see it. I was trying to sound like vocalists I was a fan of who were doing it before me, like Jaz Coleman from Killing Joke and Justin Brodarick from Godflesh, who would have these heavy vocals then all of a sudden fall into this ethereal voice that would just leave you hanging. I guess I just made it a little more defined. Working on my other project has definitely inspired me vocally and opened a lot of doors for me. I’m definitely experimenting with that.

O’Toole: Byron Stroud is touring with you playing bass, is he now a permanent member of the band?

Bell: We still haven’t figured that out yet. It’s up to Byron really and how much he wants to put into it. He’s got Strapping Young Lad and also Zimmer’s Hole. Byron’s right into playing with Fear Factory, he’s excited and he wants to be a part of it. Right now he’s not a permanent member, but Fear Factory’s never been the kind of band to have someone come in and instantly be a member.

O’Toole: Can you run us through your live vocal setup?

Bell: I just use one microphone, a Shure SM58 and at the board our sound engineer puts me through a little distortion, I also go through an Eventide for chorus and I use delay. I like the Eventide because the chorus is really great. The distortion adds a little more raspiness than I already have. I love using delay on the melodic parts.

O’Toole: Is Christian’s guitar setup similar to what Dino used to use?

Bell: No, hell no (laughs). Christian has a really great sound that is researched. In the past Dino wouldn’t know how to get a guitar sound, he would have to find someone else to do it. He would basically throw on the Line 6 and just use that. You’d have to see Christian’s rig. He’s definitely made an art of it, it’s just incredible how it sounds. Raymond is going through V drums and they are connected to an Akai so he uses triggers as well as live sounds. Byron is going through a DI, so there’s distortion and natural sound combining. When you distort a bass sound you lose a lot of bottom end but the natural sound has it and Christian figured out how to combine the two and meld it perfectly.

Lang: How does Byron feel about having the old bass player on the other side of the stage?

Bell: He’s a great bass player, he’s doing a great job both on and off the road. Byron had to learn how to play bass Fear Factory style. The way he plays in Strapping Young Lad is nothing like this. Even though Strapping Young Lad has a lot of fast stuff he doesn’t play exactly what the guitar is playing and he had to learn how to play like a guitar player, so his bass playing has become even better. He even says his bass playing is way better now than it was in the past, so he is looking forward to recording a new Strapping Young Lad album because it’s going to be even better.

Lang: When you quit the band did you intend to start another band or did you always have it in mind that you would come back and do Fear Factory again?

Bell: When I quit the band I was done, but there were things that came to light that made me rethink my situation. I really can’t talk about it too much, but we had to do it because Fear Factory as a band and as individual members were signed. We had to produce something and let Roadrunner (US) choose whether to continue with Fear Factory or not. It was during that demo recording I thought. ‘This is working really well, it all sounds good, so we’ll see what happens.’ We wrote more songs and I thought if I do the Fear Factory thing it will help me do my own project as well, because funding your own project is expensive.

Lang: You guys obviously don’t work day jobs, at least I hope you don’t do that shit any more!

Bell: Actually I was working for a while in LA. Money was bad, you know, if you don’t record and you don’t work, you’re not going to get any money. I got a job painting houses. I was working a job up until ’95, when Demanufacture came out. I was working in a movie theatre. When Demanufacture came out and we started touring I couldn’t go back to work any more because we were so busy. You have to keep busy and keep the money coming in. The last couple of years nothing was happening, no money was coming in and I still had to pay my bills so I said stuff it, I just got a job. I don’t care, I’ll go to work, I don’t mind. It was an easy job, I was painting interiors of houses, mostly for friends. They’d give me the keys to their house, let me go to town, tell me what colour they wanted and I’d sand it down and do a professional job.

Lang: People think being in a band is just this cakewalk. It can be pretty draining and although it’s a fun job it can be hard work…

Bell: Exactly. It’s probably like anything, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be and not everyone can do this. I know people in bands who did one tour and then hung it up. They thought, ‘I can’t do this, I can’t handle being on the road.’ It takes a certain mentality, a certain stamina, being on the road, away from home, away from the amenities you’re accustomed to, meeting people all the time…it’s not hard, but it takes a lot out of you, it’s exhausting meeting people and talking for hours, travelling and thinking when you get on the plane you might not come back. There’s a chance the plane could go down. It takes a lot out of you. You have to really want to do it. A lot of people ask me what kind of advice I would give a young band and I say you have to want it. You have to want to do it for the music.

Lang: When you’re around eighteen to your early twenties it’s cool to be in a band, it’s all fun but here when you have to drive a thousand kilometres to your next show. But after a while it begins to weed the men from the boys… lugging shit at three in the morning, sleeping in truck stops, all that kind of stuff.

Bell: It takes a certain kind of person to do it. You’re doing it because you love music.

Lang: We’re always making each other laugh and we’re all good buddies, but everyone has flat days. Do you guys have those kind of days?

Bell: Oh yeah. Unfortunately sometimes those bad days are the most remembered. You’ll have a bad day and there’s that one kid when you don’t want to sign something and just want to be left alone who goes out and tells everyone what a big dick you are (laughs). Sometimes you have other things on your mind. Everyone has a bad day. I have bad days, but I’m usually easy going and nothing really gets to me.