We caught Fear Factory at Soundwave Festival earlier this year while at the same time, the band were putting together new songs for the next album which is now about to drop to the public on Friday. The new material harks back to the traditional Fear Factory sound that fans have loved them for while at the same time, still moving forward, especially with the concept of the album. We speak to guitarist Dino Cazares about the album and where future technology may lead the world to.
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Andrew: You guys are on tour with Coal Chamber at the moment, how's that going so far?
Dino: It's been going great man! The crowds are just loving every minute of it, it's a great package of us, Coal Chamber and Jamey Jasta, Madlife and Saint Ridley. It's a great combination, all types of music and the crowds are turning up for it. It's been killer. We've been playing new songs live and a lot of people love the new songs from what they have heard so far. The record drops in a couple of days so everybody will have heard the record by then.
Andrew: What new ones have you been playing?
Dino: We've been playing "Soul Hacker", "Protomech" and "Dielectric" and we've been rotating them.
Andrew: The last time we saw you was obviously earlier this year at Soundwave, how was that for you guys?
Dino: Soundwave was amazing! We put a lot of hard work into Australia, we've been going there since the beginning of our career pretty much and obviously it paid off. We have a couple of gold records there, "Demanufacture" and "Obsolete" and seeing the reaction that we got at the Soundwave Festival, it made me feel like we should of been a main stage band and also we put a lot of hard work in it and it paid off. We felt like it paid off and it still paid off and we can't wait to get back there, hopefully we will get back there next year but we will see what happens.
Andrew: You have played festivals in Australia before like the Big Day Out so how did Soundwave compare to that?
Dino: Soundwave was amazing but I mean they were all amazing! We've done the Big Day Out about 4 times and a couple of times that we did it we were like, 'Wow this is massive, it's amazing!'. We were on the main stage, it was great but that was when it had more metal. The Big Day Out has a very big variety of music, they have other bands that have nothing to do with metal but Soundwave kinda gears more towards the hard rock and metal vibe and obviously it was a really great turnout. We love and respect both festivals, they both have been big benefits for us through our careers.
Andrew: Did you manage to catch Ministry and Godflesh at any of their side shows by any chance?
Dino: Of course, of course!
Andrew: Great shows weren't they?
Dino: Yes they were!
Andrew: It's a pity that you guys didn't team up with them as they would of been perfect side shows if you played with them.
Dino: We tried to but AJ (Maddah) the promoter decided to seperate us, I don't know why, but we tried to get the package of Ministry, Fear Factory and Godflesh [which] I think would of been amazing.
Andrew: Yeah definitely but you had Exodus which was pretty cool as well.
Dino: Yeah Exodus is great, we love those guys. They are our friends, we've known them for years and very happy for Gary Holt, he's in Slayer now and Exodus is doing well so we love those guys.
Andrew: Now the new album is about to drop in the next couple of days, "Genexus". We did a review of it a few weeks ago and just amazing stuff, I love this album. It sort of has a lot of the old elements of Fear Factory and it reminds me of "Obsolete" and "Digimortal" and stuff like that. What can you tell me about how this album came together?
Dino: A lot of people have been comparing the record to a lot of different things, a lot of our catalogue from "Demanufacture" to "Obsolete" to "Digimortal" and we're proud of all those records so we don't take it as an insult whatsoever. How the process came along was we really didn't set out to write a record that sounded like those old records, but we also wanted to write something that sounds like us. We wanted to do what we do best and that's the industrial metal, beautiful melodic choruses. So we also took a different approach on the drums on this record where we wanted to create this killer hybrid between the human organic playing it with digital tones so that was the approach that we took on the record. And we basically write a bunch of words down and sometimes a word like Genexus can inspire you to write certain things, you get a picture in your mind of what that song should sound like or what that tone of an album should be like. So that was kind of our approach, certain words that inspired us that we came up with and obviously what inspired those words were stuff that we watched whether it's movies or read. Not much has really changed, the core element of Fear Factory is still there and still very relevant and you hear it on this record.
Andrew: You touched on some of these elements on the last album "The Industrialist" but did you feel that some of the other albums were kinda missing some of those elements which you brought back on this album?
Dino: Yeah maybe, albums like "Mechanize" and "The Industrialist" maybe they didn't have enough groove songs so we kinda brought some of the groove back. Kind of more of the vibe of a song like "Edgecrusher" or a song like "Shock", we brought those groovy elements. It's funny because we didn't really notice how groovy it was until after we were recording these songs like, 'Wow this is really heavy, this is really groovy!' and a song like "Soul Hacker" kind of reminds me of "Edgecrusher" as far as the groove vibe and things like that. We wanted to bring some of the grooviness back into Fear Factory, we thought a little bit of that was missing.
Andrew: Funnily enough the first the track "Autonomous Combat System", the ending of that song reminds me of "Zero Signal". I don't know if that was coincidence or not but was there any intention to have that vibe on there?
Dino: That's the first time I've heard that but I'll have to go back and listen to the tune. Again there's going to be certain things you'll hear that remind you of stuff that we've done in the past and we have no problem with that because obviously we inspired ourselves.
Andrew: You mentioned before about being inspired by many things including movies and funnily enough the new Terminator movie came out this year, so did you see that movie?
Dino: Yeah I did see the movie and it's funny that the title of the movie and the title of the record are very similar but that's just by coincidence. Obviously us and the Terminator people who created this title are pretty much in tune with them, or they're in tune with us - however you want to call it! But it happened to be by coincidence that the 2 titles are very similar. They kind of have a similar meaning because Genisys was obviously the beginning and they go back to the beginning on the new movie which definitely fits in with our record because Genisys is part of the title of the record. It's basically a hybrid of 2 words, Genisys and Nexus and Genisys is the beginning and I guess you could say we went back to the beginning. And Nexus is kind of more of the future of the connection between the beginning, or you could say old and new. For some wierd reason I think that we kind of created that, some of it was purposely and some of it was unpurposely. Once we came up with the title "Genexus", OK what are we going to make it be? And every record that we put out has a meaning to it, there's always been some sort of back story or concept that's always been relevant in our music and "Genexus" is, what we're trying to say is the next evolution in technology with the singularity process where man and machine become one.
Andrew: What is it about that whole sci-fi/robotic world that interests you? Why do you write songs about it?
Dino: Because you may think a machine is just a machine but it's also human, we're creating this. We're trying to create a machine that's like us but a better version. Stephen Hawking has a group of scientists and they're trying to prevent this from happening, it's funny like the Terminator too, trying to go back in time to prevent the future from happening! Which is funny because Stephen Hawking and the group of scientists are trying to ban certain things because they see where the future might go which is ironic. Nano technology is growing and growing and it's getting more advanced and we're going to be able to inject like a computer cell into our blood stream and basically it can somehow, hopefully attack cancer cells or any sort of diseases that you have in your body which will be able to attack it and eliminate it. That's the medical purposes that they are trying to use it for, whereas the military are trying to use that similar technology to create certain automatons or robots or whatever you want to call it to maybe go out there and try to assassinate people or however they want to use it. That's where Stephen Hawking and them are trying to ban that from the military from using that sort of technology because once it goes there, that could be the end of humanity, that's how they feel. We also think of making sex robits, or sexbots as they call it...pleasurebots, where you are able to basically order a female robot. They kind of already do with the silicone dolls that appear like human but once they install this technology in silicone dolls, you're going to be able to have a woman.
Andrew: Haha!
Dino: You laugh but there's a lot of lonely people out there having sex on the internet, that are sexting each other. The human contact, people are starting to care less and less about each other. So it's like, 'Why would I want to have a relationship, I want to do what I want to do. I can just order a sex robot and tell it what the fuck to do'. That's kind of where things are going and they don't want things to go in that direction which I understand but I don't think I'll be alive to see where any of that goes because we're talking in the next 50 to a 100 years to be there. But on this record "Genexus" we're already talking about that, it's already here. We're already talking about 50 years from now on this record.
Andrew: So "Genexus" is really like the future album for society.
Dino: Maybe on the next record we need to go back...back haha! We need to go back to the beginning, make a death metal record haha!
Andrew: Haha back to a "Soul of Of A New Machine" maybe!
Dino: Exactly!
Andrew: Well as I said the new album sounds fantastic and we can't wait for the fans to hear it when it drops in a couple of days. Thanks for your time today, it's been a pleasure and have fun on the tour!
Dino: Thank you very much and hopefully we will see you soon.
Catch Fear Factory on tour in North America now with Coal Chamber
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Interview by Andrew "Schizodeluxe" Massie on August 5th 2015
