Fear Factory : Natural born again killers...

Burton : It’s a very positive state of mind, we’re very excited and feel very good about this album, which shows really what we are, we’re very proud of it and we’re anxious and impatient to talk about it, doing interviews and all that.

-Just one question about that, but did the tensions between you and Dino calm down, are you still on bad terms ?

-Burton : I haven’t spoken to him since March 2002. Sometimes, friends come and go !

-What happened to your different side projects, ‘Kush’ and ‘ Ascension of the watchers’ ?

-Christian : After the split, we all pursued our own projects. We were about to get signed to Sony, that's when I received the letter from Roadrunner Records saying we should stop everything, that we were still under contract with them, etc. That's why we had to figure out a way to get off the label. We're still working on it.

-Burton : John and I started our own side project, ‘Ascension of the watchers’, and it’s still on the development process, still a baby, we’ve written some music, and we try to develop it, so we’re gonna record a second demo, with a better sound, so we’re still working on it, but Fear Factory is back now, and it’s like a practical snowball, in a good way, something that’s gonna be generating a lot of positive things for us and help us along : if Fear Factory is successful, we can use FF as a tool to help our other side projects. I saw that as a positive effort. I'll still be able to work on it and, hopefully, people will hear it and the same for Kush.

-Those songs, you both wrote for those projects, are they very different from FF and could you have used it in Fear Factory ?

-Christian : Absolutely not, they were written for those projects

-Burton : The music we’ve written is very much a different vibe, different feeling, I didn’t write it for Fear Factory, but for this other project, and I think that the music that Christian and I wrote for Fear Factory is really perfect, it’s really what it needs.

-Christian, how was it to work with Cypress Hill ? Was did it bring to you ?

-Christian : It taught me how to work in a very different environment with different people, they were very good friends of ours and it was a great experience to work with them. Working with a lot of different artists and musicians, you learn a lot, you have to deal with different people, different mentalities...

-Burton : I know that Christian grew a lot as an artist and as a musician and as a person as well. He was working with so many different artists and people that it makes an interaction : he’s much more confident, the music he writes is very good, he’s a professional now, it’s very cool.

-There’s a new member in FF, Byron Stroud, formerly in Strapping young lads : what does he bring to Fear Factory ?

-Burton : when it was decided we needed a bass player, we searched in our memories and in our record collections, trying to find what bass players we liked, from bands we liked, and try someone who would really fit in FF. We could only figure three people, and Byron was the one we liked the most, we thought he would be perfect and we called him up. Byron Stroud is a great guy, and we had to find someone we liked first, that was a very important part when you come to a relationship, you have to like each other and there must be a reason to want to work with someone. He wasn’t just like another bass player but a great person, the fact that he’s as good as a bass player a he’s as a person, that is why we chose him, and I’m very happy with him now. He’s not a permanent member yet, but that’s up to Byron.

-And what do you think about Devin Townshend ?

Burton : Devin Townshend is a very nice guy, one of my good friends, I've known him for many years, and he’s always a riot to be around.

-You produced this album yourselves : was it your very own choice ? Wouldn’t you be interested to work with someone like Devin ?

-Christian : Devin produces his own music and that would make Devin Townshend, or with the Strapping young lads, it's their own sound, we don’t need somebody to come to our camp and give us a sound, we really sound like Fear Factory and don’t need someone else, because we have our sound...

-Burton : He’s a great producer, he produced many bands, he has his style, but we just wanna keep our style, that spontaneity that was created during the writing process, keep that energy, so producing ourselves was the only choice.

-Talking about that, you worked with Ken Marshall, sound engineer who also worked with Skinny Puppy, amongst others : why this choice ?

-Burton : This band has always been one of my favorites ! Ken was actually working on the new one when we where in the studio, working on the details : Ken is a good guy and a great engineer, he can capture the sound that you already have, and like he understands Skinny Puppy, he understood Fear Factory, so everything was easy, he’s very efficient.

-Do you think you’ll release another remix LP, like you did twice before ?

-Christian : Yes, we’re working on it...

-Burton : We’re making a wish list of all artists to ask right now, so it’s something we wanna get on, but this record has to come out first and we'll do some work for that. When it's ready, we'll start making plans about it, hopefully maybe toward the end of the year, beginning of next year, or a bit later. In a perfect world !

-Someone who’s very important in playing samples and keyboards for Fear Factory for a long time is John Bechdel : could he become a real fifth Fear Factory member ?

-Christian : John is really kind of our fifth member, as he’s been with us since 98, which is quite a long time.

-Burton : He hasn't written any music for this album, he's a busy man, he’s got a family, he works a lot, but John Bechdel is a great guy, great on stage, we love to have him around, so if he wants to add more, I’d love to hear more. Like Byron, it's up to John as well !

-On this album, you played both bass and guitar, but now you only have the guitar left : do you miss your former instrument ?

-Christian : No, no ! I’m not really that attached ! That doesn’t matter, as long as I can play in the band, guitar or bass, whatever.

-Burton : It doesn’t seems like he misses his bass when he’s playing on stage !

-You recently toured in Australia with Korn and Static X : how were the new songs received and, for you, were they as great live as you expected when you wrote and record them ?

-Burton : It’s better than what we expected. On this Australian tour, we did only one new song, because it was too early before the record came out to play too many new songs, because it would just have confused the audience. It would have been interesting, but we just wanted a tease, we had like forty minutes on stage, and it was more like : Fear Factory’s here, there’s old songs, new songs and it sounds good. The fans were very positive, the reaction was great, better than I expected.

-And this new album, can we say it’s a return to Fear Factory roots, metal and machines, as opposed to ‘Digimortal’ ?

-Burton : ‘Digimortal’ was very programmed...

-Christian : And over produced !

-Burton : ‘Archetype’ is exactly what that is, all the songs on ‘Archetype’ are what Fear Factory has always been, heavy, aggressive, mechanically driven, percussively driven, high energy. Everything’s here, all we’ve always been : the aggressive sound, the melodies, we're not doing anything new for Fear Factory, but this record is like a mature step, we knew exactly what we wanted to do this time, it’s more focused, more direct, and we did what we do best.

-About the lyrics in general, where does your main inspiration comes from : TV, news ? Or more personal events ?

-Burton : Lyrically, I was mostly inspired by what we were experiencing in the past few years. It influenced my life, and we were living very emotional time, with the split up and the legal issues, it was very trying, and it was difficult at times : this record was our therapy. Lyrically, I wrote it down, this is it what I felt. I didn’t sit down to write some futuristic concept story, because one of us was pressuring myself , and I didn’t want to try and think that hard, really I just wanted to write what I felt, like I’ve always done pretty much. I have been writing basically the story of what we’ve been dealing with in the past few years. It’s a far better story than trying to make one up : it’s a story of conflicts : conflict within the band, with individuals, with the industry, society in general, it’s so many conflicts that you can hear it on the record, and that’s what Fear Factory has always been about, conflict between the men and the machine, man versus machine, the concept on this one is reality, this is what really happen, this is the true story, and it’s better than making one up !.

-You cover a Nirvana song, ‘School’, on ‘Archetype’ : why this song and why this band ?

-Christian : We always did covers in the past, so we said ‘Let ‘s do a cover’ ! It has to be something that's special, rather than a metal/punk cover, so we said, why wouldn’t we do a Nirvana cover ? Well, that’s kind of special ! I knew right away it was going to be the first record. He presented a song and I thought it was perfect, I knew this song, it’s an easy song and an honor to pay tribute to a great band !

-Burton : Just purely respect ! Covers are fun to do, and we were Nirvana fans before we started Fear Factory, and now it’s Kurt Cobaïn death’s anniversary, and I realized it a few days ago, someone mentioned that it was the tenth anniversary of Kurt Cobaïn’s death. Ten years : damn ! I remember how I was, in 94, we were on tour with Sepultura, in Denver, a crazy tour ! Pure respect, Nirvana was a great band, that’s why we covered it !

-If FF was a movie, which one could it be ?

-Burton : You can mix ‘The Matrix’ with ‘Tetsuo Iron Man’, two different styles, but ‘Tetsuo Iron Man’ is a little more organically industrial and "The Matrix" electronically, so you can mix those two together, like "Akira", Akira could be Fear Factory, maybe.

-Will we see you in France ?

-Christian : I think we’re gonna play the Fury Fest ( at Le Mans, in the end of June, with 63 other bands...)

Interview made in Paris, 10th March 2004.

Photo : Jean Paul Coillard.