In praise of “Demanufacture”, Matt Lawrence from the Liverpool City Champion has posted a very cool story today…

“In 1995 the band produced one of heavy metal’s golden moments with their mind-expanding release, Demanufacture.

The album pushed the genre to its very limits, incorporating visceral guitar playing, razor sharp drumming, and over all techno theme with electronic landscapes.

It was capped by a vocal performance by Burton C Bell, who effortlessly proved heavy metal vocalists were not only guttural bellowers, but were quite capable of clean in tune singing.

Theirs was a creation that sparked a new genre of heavy music, one replicated by many an act to follow, and one that has provided a platform for each of the band’s six releases to follow.”  Read the full story here.

According to Bell, the band was unaware of the effect it would have on heavy music at the point of its creation.

Fear Factory are regular visitors to Australia and they’re touring again in July, but this time around they have a special treat for fans: they’re playing their classic second album Demanufacture in full for the first time ever.

The 1995 concept album – recorded with the band’s “classic lineup” – is widely recognised as one of industrial metal’s most innovative, influential and revolutionary records. The current live lineup of Fear Factory features two key members from the Demanufacture era – singer Burton C. Bell and guitarist Dino Cazares, who was absent from the band’s lineup for most of the past decade. They’re joined by recent recruits – bassist Matt DeVries and drummer Mike Heller – who joined Fear Factory early last year just prior to the release of The Industrialist album.

The band was last in Australia in September and toured Australia twice in 2010, visiting us to play on the Big Day Out tour. They returned later in the year as one of Metallica’s support acts, playing sets that included highlights from Demanufacture and Digimortal.

When the band visited us for the Metallica tour, FL caught up with Cazares to chat about reconciliations, recriminations and remix albums.

Fear Factory Demanufature tour:

Thursday, July 4 – The Tivoli, Brisbane (18+)
Friday, July 5 – Unsw Roundhouse, Sydney (Licensed All Ages)
Sunday, July 7 – The Palace, Melbourne (18+)
Tuesday, July 9 – Hq, Adelaide (18+)
Thursday, July 11 – Metro City, Perth (18+)

Tickets on sale Thursday, May 30

BCB speaks of life on the road with MICHIGANLIVE.com.

“For musicians like Dino (Cazares, guitarist) and I, every couple years we put out a record — one, to promote new music but also to promote old music so we go on tour. “No one’s selling records anymore. The only way working musicians can survive is by touring. I consider myself a working musician. Bands like Bon Jovi, they’re musicians that chose to tour. They don’t have to tour, but they chose to. It’s good for them but they don’t have to survive by touring. That’s how we survive.” Read more here!

Burton C Bell

We love the team at MetalInsider.net,  they always ask the cool questions.  BCB was interviewed by them for a feature called “My First Band.”  His story is below and you can read the entire feature here.

Burton C Bell of Fear Factory : 
I moved to Los Angeles in 1989 from Washington DC. I had hopes of being a writer and bounced from job to job. After I’d been there for a few months, a friend of mine handed me a flyer and goes, “hey man, why don’t you try out for my new band I’m putting together,” because I always used to talk to this guy and we had similar tastes in music. So, went and tried out and got the part. We were inspired by early 1990’s, so bands like Helmet, Big Black, early-White Zombie, Tad. We were kind of a gritty, industrial, noise kind of rock, and we were called Hate Face. We were really about William S Burroughs, Naked Lunch, Jim Bean and crystal meth.

Burton C Bell

‘Body Of Art” is an art project that is raising funds for Cancer Research.  Tattooed celebrities, tattoo artists, sports personalities and inspirational figures in the public eye are asked to pose for a portrait in the Body of Art Style.  And these portraits are being auctioned to raise funds for Cancer Research. See Burton’s portrait and help the cause, for more information click here!