One of my favourite bands with a diverse and influential career.
Really Fear Factory are not for purists, they were probably the biggest part of the 90's alternative wave of extreme music in the early beginnings, highly influencing the likes of Machine Head and leading perhaps some may claim to even Slipknot. The guitars are razor tight, Dino is an utter pro at palm muting and created a (now highly plagurised) original and highly influential sound from his guitar which many dont realize just how big an impact it made. Herrera is a god on drums, and no one that hasn't intellectually heard their early work can really argue that, he is as precise as a drum machine and as fast as george kollias and Burton Bell was the biggest original contributor of the clean/heavy vocal style to metal. Machine Head in particular owe their vocals to Burton. Not everyone likes his voice, I like to think of him a bit like a throaty Bono, instantly appreciable from a clean perspective with great death/hardcore screams on the surface but as you listen to their earlier work you really appreciate his dirty vocal range as well.
I thought Archetype was fairly poor, they lost their old edge when they lost Dino I believe however Transgression had the makings of a brilliant (though mainstream) industrial groove album but it was rushed, not to the bands fault, and turned out quite wishy washy.
Demanufacture and Obsolete are absolute stone cold classics, go listen to obsolete through start to finish with a good surround sound system while reading the entire booklet that comes with it, it is completely mesmerising when put to the script that is supposed to accompany the sci-fi concept album it in all its details.
Concrete and Soul of a New Machine are brutal, agressive and sadly often overlooked. Concrete is more Grind, less Industrial but undoubtably in my mind one of the most brutal records ever made. Soul of a New Machine on the other hand is overwhelming, and not always in a good way, it feels like you are listening to a good album with all the B-sides left in cluttering it up. Inspite of this it is full of gems and proved the bands most influential album, it was where it began. I highly recommend both of them, especially Concrete to anyone that likes Old-school death metal or Grindcore.
