Newsgroups: rec.music.industrial
From: [email protected] (Deuce)
Organization: New Mexico State University
Date: 14 Jun 1995 19:04:15 GMT
Subject: Fear Factory article/interview

This is taken from "Indie File," which is a free publication distributed in
North and South Carolina.  Any punctuation, grammatical, or informational
errors are not mine.

FEAR FACTORY				By Chris Ayers

  Man versus machine: an age-old conflict which has become quite the
fertile breeding ground for the industrial metal scene.  How far can a band
go before they are considered either one or the other in still the major
quandary; a metal outfit with too many electronics will surely alienate many
a closed-minded rivethead, while an overzealous guitar grinder might find
more than a few full-on ravers sitting that tune out.  Los Angeles' Fear
Factory have always skated that line, incising a name for themselves with
their 1992 debut Soul of a New Machine, followed by 1993's Front Line
Assembeled remix EP, Fear Is The Mind Killer.  The brand new full-length,
Demanufacture, is to be released on June 13, so I spoke with
guitar/hardware expert Dino Cazares about the album, side projects, living
in L.A., and Science fiction:

  Indie File: Living in L.A., is there any marked difference in the
aggression in your music since the riots?
  Dino: No, I think the aggression is still there from the first record. 
FF is definitely influenced by L.A.; in some ways FF *is* L.A.  There's one
song on the record called "H-K" in which the intro talks about gun control.
Now you've got white, American middle-class kids who carry guns because the
think it's cool, especially in L.A.; since you're exposed to so much stuff 
there, you get desensitized to it.  So these kids, they kill without
remorse, wuthout guilt, almost like a machine because they don't think
twice about it.  That's kinda where the whole mechanical thing comes in, the
FF thing, being cold; but at the same time, Demanufacture is positive,
hoping to be a neo-utopia, breaking down the old and creating a new.
  IF: Explain the computer end of Demanufacture and did you see a drum
machine?
  Dino: We never use a drum machine; our Raymond [Herrera] is just a
phenomenal drummer.  He records his drums with a click track to keep
time, so when he's playing, it's in perfect time; even if it was a hair of
a second off, you could actually correct it in the computer.  Since he
played with a click track, later on it's easier to synch up the keyboards,
but at the same time, there's still the human feel there.
  IF: How's the new bass player, and what happened to Andy Shives?
  Dino: Christian [Wolbers] is from Belgium, and he was out in L.A. on
vacation.  We met him through the guys in Biohazard; we were looking for
a new bassist at the time.  So he came down and tried out, and we ended
up keeping him.  Andy just didn't work out.
  IF: How did you get involved with Nailbomb?
  Dino: Max [Cavalera] and Alex [Newport] were sampling one of my riffs
for the record, and it just didn't come across cool; they couldn't sample
it right.  So they ended up calling me and having me fly down there and
play it.  It was a cool thing to do.
  IF: What exactly is your relationship with the Mexican death metal band
Brujeria, and can we expect anything new from them?
  Dino: Well, since the cat's pretty much out of the bag, I'm in the band;
me and the drummer Raymond basically write all of the music.  This guy
named John sings and writes all the lyrics, and we have three bass players:
Billy Gould from Faith No More, Shane from Napalm Death, and Pat from Down
By Law.  We got a new record coming out called Razo Odiero, which means
"hated race."  It's still funny, but there are a couple of songs that's
serious, talking about a lot of the Mexican politics happening now.
  IF: So all that press kit stuff on Brujeria was just a joke?
  Dino: Yes and no.  Some of it was made up, some of it was actually
taken from a true story that happened, about Mexican drug lords.  They
would smuggle the drugs back and forth, and they would kidnap white
Americans and actually sacrifice them believing if they did that, it would
protect them from the federales, the police.  So we kinda took from that
concept and made a really dark humor joke out of it.  Did you know the
El Patron 7" in Columbia goes for $100?  The guy on the cover, Pablo
Escobar, was like a god in Columbia.  He would smuggle massive amounts of
drugs, mostly cocaine, into the States, he would make billions of dollars,
and he would take that money and carefully put it back into the community.
He would help people start their businesses, buy homes for people; they
actually have an altar for him, with his picture.  They PRAY for him.  He
even assassinated eleven judges; he bought out the police; they had to call
in the army to come take him out, and they killed him then.
  IF: How about the upcoming video for "Replica"?
  Dino: It's the first video we've ever done, and it's kinda like a skit
from Blade Runner, "replica" meaning the same as "replicant."  We're actually
acting in the video, and we have an actor, too.  It's taken from the scene
where they interview the replicants to find out if they are replicants; it
shows the little camera that goes on the eyeball, they got a TV monitor
and the eyeball's really huge, and they can tell by the movement of the
retina in the eye and stuff like that.  We do that whole skit.
  IF: So you're really into sci-fi then?
  Dino: Yeah, Aliens, Terminator, Dune... and the Star Wars trilogy, big
time.  The only thing I didn't like about Star Wars was that there were no
Mexicans in the future; the closest thing they had to Mexicans was Chewbacca,
and they called him Chewie! (laughing)

  Exposure for the band will come in several forms in the near future;
Dino mentioned being included on the soundtracks for the movies The
Hideaway and Johnny Mnemonic, plus a US tour is being planned for the summer,
opening for Megadeth.  His very last statement to me sums up everything:
"One thing that FF tries to portray on this record is individuality, just 
like the movie Dead Poet Society.  That's something we're really into."


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"Cold winds push against her skin, raising scream and freezing gaze,
 years of the cathedral stone crashing to the ground...
 Reflections from the church's windows flicker out into the night,
 A single hope escapes the keep, formless praying left unbound..."
				-- Battery, "The Keep"
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-