So those of you who read Headbang may recall a monthly piece I used to do way back titled ‘Rediscovered’ the point of it being a chance for me to wax lyrical about an album that I love/ had a big effect on me/ is just worth checking out. Having finished the latest batch of album reviews and finding that my desire to write something was still present I figured I’d have a crack at rediscovering… Rediscovered. But that name belongs to another time, I’m not quite settled on what to call this one but ‘Choice Pickings’ seemed like a good filler. So ladies and gentlemen… here it is;
Fear Factory – Digimortal
It goes without saying that one of the biggest comebacks of 2009/10 was that of Fear Factory with Dino Cazares and Burton C. Bell settling their differences and coming together again to play some of the heaviest music heard. FF aren’t heavy in the Cannibal Corpse sense, but there’s an intensity to music, and particularly the rhythm section that isn’t so brutal as much as it’s just purely intense. Now one arguably one of the band’s finest albums, Archetype, was recorded by a Dino-less line-up and I’m not trying to undermine that by any stretch of the mark but for me Digimortal remains the essential Fear Factory album.
A large chunk of my reasoning for this is the fact that it was the first of their albums that I heard and from the moment that ‘What Will Become?’ kicked in I was sold, by the time the album reached the superb (but often disliked) ‘Back The Fuck Up’ there was no turning back on my part. It’s difficult to fully relate the feeling this album gave me without sounding retarded and pretentious. Quite simply, it blew me away, and along with my hearing went an pre-conceptions of the meaning of the words ‘heavy metal’. The band are often described as ‘industrial’ or ‘industrial metal’ and for once, the genre could come something close to actually describing the sound of the band. The clinical precision with which they play is unbelievable. At times they sound literally mechanical, but not mechanical in the dull, wooden sense. The music is played with such intensity that it sounds inhuman, an interesting note considering the lyrical themes of this record.
Fear Factory were in many ways the band that moved me from thinking Killswitch and opened my eyes to so much more. The album features what is quite possibly the definitive (or most overplayed) song by this band, I mean ‘Linchpin’ of course. The fact that it became of the band’s most popular tracks to this day says a lot about this album, in many ways it was the point when Fear Factory climbed to the top of the mountain after 12 years of making music, not realising that it was just months before they would split.
The album has been criticised as a move away from the band’s more extreme metal roots and they were even accused of ‘cashing in’ on the popularity of nu-metal. This reaction characterises one of our most frequent thorns here at RC, that is, the refusal by so many music fans in general (not just metal fans although they are particularly bad) as demanding something new and original from their favourite acts, only to hate it upon release and generally argue that ‘the older stuff is better’.
Well there you go, without me being too overly technical or self-indulgent I’ve hopefully encouraged you to perhaps revisit (or check out for the first time) an album which whilst it often sparks argument and may not be the band’s finest hour is certainly significant.
I’m always open to suggestions so let me know here on the site (or email me mrbogle@reversecurrent.com) with any recommendations for albums you think are worth revisiting. Not that I’ll listen.
Mr Bogle
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The UK’s premier indie metal festival, Bloodstock Open Air, is already looking to be pretty sick next year, even though the fond memories of this summers event are still fresh. To add to the already certifiably hardcore line up including Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation and Behemoth, the nostalgia tinged metal of Fear Factory and Children of Bodom (who I saw right back at Bloodstock indoor in 2004, when I was like 15) has also been added to the pretty varied line up. Also added are Amorphis, the Finnish melodic metal band who’s debut album surprised me in that it was actually pretty good. Anyway, Bloodstock lineup so far is:
Reverse Current 
Choice Pickings (or the resurrection of Rediscovered)
February 27, 2010So those of you who read Headbang may recall a monthly piece I used to do way back titled ‘Rediscovered’ the point of it being a chance for me to wax lyrical about an album that I love/ had a big effect on me/ is just worth checking out. Having finished the latest batch of album reviews and finding that my desire to write something was still present I figured I’d have a crack at rediscovering… Rediscovered. But that name belongs to another time, I’m not quite settled on what to call this one but ‘Choice Pickings’ seemed like a good filler. So ladies and gentlemen… here it is;
Fear Factory – Digimortal
It goes without saying that one of the biggest comebacks of 2009/10 was that of Fear Factory with Dino Cazares and Burton C. Bell settling their differences and coming together again to play some of the heaviest music heard. FF aren’t heavy in the Cannibal Corpse sense, but there’s an intensity to music, and particularly the rhythm section that isn’t so brutal as much as it’s just purely intense. Now one arguably one of the band’s finest albums, Archetype, was recorded by a Dino-less line-up and I’m not trying to undermine that by any stretch of the mark but for me Digimortal remains the essential Fear Factory album.
A large chunk of my reasoning for this is the fact that it was the first of their albums that I heard and from the moment that ‘What Will Become?’ kicked in I was sold, by the time the album reached the superb (but often disliked) ‘Back The Fuck Up’ there was no turning back on my part. It’s difficult to fully relate the feeling this album gave me without sounding retarded and pretentious. Quite simply, it blew me away, and along with my hearing went an pre-conceptions of the meaning of the words ‘heavy metal’. The band are often described as ‘industrial’ or ‘industrial metal’ and for once, the genre could come something close to actually describing the sound of the band. The clinical precision with which they play is unbelievable. At times they sound literally mechanical, but not mechanical in the dull, wooden sense. The music is played with such intensity that it sounds inhuman, an interesting note considering the lyrical themes of this record.
Fear Factory were in many ways the band that moved me from thinking Killswitch and opened my eyes to so much more. The album features what is quite possibly the definitive (or most overplayed) song by this band, I mean ‘Linchpin’ of course. The fact that it became of the band’s most popular tracks to this day says a lot about this album, in many ways it was the point when Fear Factory climbed to the top of the mountain after 12 years of making music, not realising that it was just months before they would split.
The album has been criticised as a move away from the band’s more extreme metal roots and they were even accused of ‘cashing in’ on the popularity of nu-metal. This reaction characterises one of our most frequent thorns here at RC, that is, the refusal by so many music fans in general (not just metal fans although they are particularly bad) as demanding something new and original from their favourite acts, only to hate it upon release and generally argue that ‘the older stuff is better’.
Well there you go, without me being too overly technical or self-indulgent I’ve hopefully encouraged you to perhaps revisit (or check out for the first time) an album which whilst it often sparks argument and may not be the band’s finest hour is certainly significant.
I’m always open to suggestions so let me know here on the site (or email me mrbogle@reversecurrent.com) with any recommendations for albums you think are worth revisiting. Not that I’ll listen.
Mr Bogle
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