Fear Factory – Recoded
Release Date: 28th October 2022
Label: Nuclear Blast
Pre-Order/Pre-Save
Genre: EDM, Electronica, Industrial, Metal.
FFO: NIN, Static X.
Review By: Scott Hudson
Do you remember the first time that you heard Fear Factory? Do you remember that first time that you heard Burton C. Bell crushing those vocals? The drums from Raymond Herrera that caused arguments about pre-programming? Those flowing, impossible melodies? What about the songs? Replica? Resurrection? The epics such as Shock? Zero Signal? Linchpin?
Now put yourself back into the present… A band that hasn’t really been the same since the 90s, a band that has been on hiatus at points, and now have a remix album, with the aim of doing something different… Which could either end up like the forgettable ‘ReAnimation’ from Linkin Park or something interesting like Korn’s strange but hard to ignore, ‘Path Of Totality’.
We open with a spoken word, before going straight into Hatred Will Prevail, which is pumped and adds a statement of intent. The huge hook helps the track anchor and sink in. Disobey follows, and this is where we have the first fight of Bell and crushing riffs, which ends up sounding muddy before dropping into the trademark Fear Factory rousing chorus, which has been part of the band for 30 years.
I Am The Nightrider, which I am guessing is taken from Mad Max, is a pummelling gut-punch of aggression and follows the formula of descending into angelic chorus much like the solid Genexus. A Path To Salvation is the first time, Dear Reader, that as a child of the 80s, we start to hear the ol’ Megatron voice come to the fore (you know, the cartoon before Michael Bay ruined our childhood). Unfortunately, it’s the peak of middle of the album filler.
Worthless feels so close to EDM you could feel Ollie Sykes licking his lips, I mean, I could hear this in ‘da club…’ which doesn’t mean it’s a bad track, the keys are clear, and the melody is pronounced, but is this band that made Edgecrusher or even Anodized?
Empires Fall begins with a distorted voice-over, and then we hear the epic drums barraging into a strong double kick beat and a punishing riff. It’s a complete change of tact and, as the kids would say, “vibe” – this is one of the few tracks that takes the remix and pushes it into new territory.
System Assassin and Hypocrisy Of Faith are classic end of the album sketches, and in your humble reviewers’ opinion, they will not live long in the memory. Solid tracks, with elements of interest, but the strange hardcore EDM, as much as I understand that the BPM is similar to metal, just doesn’t quite gel for me. We then are bookended with yet another spoken word, which leads into one of the longer tracks, which does feel like something that I would have rocked out to in the late 90s…it wouldn’t feel out of place in Blade 2.
In closing, any Fear Factory fan knows the chaos that has followed the band and the infighting that has ensued. This is not a great album, it has its moments, but even the most hard-boiled fan (which I count myself as) would struggle to love or even have it on a par with Transgression.
(2 / 5)
