By Scott Boelsen on February 6, 2010

Fear Factory

w/ Blood Duster

Prince of Wales, St. Kilda – 27th Jan 2010

Fear Factory are touring Australia, playing sideshows in selected cities across the country. The shows came as a bit of a surprise after the band were announced for the Big Day Out after the rest of the line-up had been finalized. They are touring in support of their forthcoming album, which is being built up as a make or break album for the band after a tumultuous few years, including changes to the line up and some bad blood with the former members. The year is 2004…

Well, you can’t blame me for the confusion. The parallels between this Australian tour and that in 2004 are uncanny. Yet a lot has come to pass in the intervening 6 years. The band, which broke up all those years ago only to regroup without guitarist Dino Cazeres, recorded two albums. The first album of which was seen by many fans as an amazing return to form. The second album, Transgressions, received more mixed reviews…

Yet with history repeating itself, stuttering, falling over and getting back up again, Fear Factory are once again touring Australia, with Dino on guitar, Byron Stroud on bass, Gene Hoglan on drums, and Burton C. Bell on vocals, now the only ever-present member of the band. Having pulled only a small crowd just a day earlier at the Big Day Out (admittedly, they were competing with Muse), it remained to be seen whether this giant of the industrial/nu metal scene of the nineties and early 2000’s still had the pulling power of their prime.

Turning up to the Prince of Wales bandroom an hour before kick off, there was no doubt that Fear Factory are still a force amongst Australian audiences. Even an hour before the start of their set, this moderately sized yet awkwardly shaped venue was near capacity, leaving just a back entrance past the toilets as a means of getting up close to the stage.

Blood Duster had the sole support slot for the night, and they went about on stage showing that, no, Australian extreme occa rock is not an unusual fit with American industrial metal. They played their usual set about sex, dugs and rock ‘n roll, and that was just in their song ‘Drink, Fight, Fuck’. The rest of the set consisted of their usual selection of one to three minute long songs, full of profanity and singlets. By the time they left the stage, only a short time after they had started, the crowd was red hot, with the numerous fans in the venue having to work at their best to keep the venue from melting… no, really…

After about forty minutes of thumb twiddling, and watching the sound tech trying to get the roadies attention using only a torch for ten straight minutes, the lights dropped, and one of my all time favourite sounds came over the speakers – the intro of ‘Shock’. Instantly converting any venue into a mosh pit whenever this song is played, Shock has been the opener of Fear Factory sets ever since Obsolete was released, and it never fails to fire up the crowd. The mosh pit took off as the lights revealed on stage what has now become known as the ‘biggest band in metal’ (see photos).

With the screams of ‘Shock’ still fresh in our ears, the natural follow-up ‘Edgecrusher’ kept the crowd in the air for another few minutes. The sound was pretty much as good as it gets, which has not always been the case in a band where guitar, vocals and background effects seem to compete for dominance. Burton’s double assault of screams and melodic singing came across as clear as the night air outside, whilst Dino’s guitar were crunching but never overdone.

After playing Smasher/Devourer, also from Obsolete, Burton promised to take us back in time to their first album ‘Soul of a New Machine’, and played ‘Crash Test’, ‘Martyr’ and ‘Scapegoat’, which don’t sound as dated as you might expect for songs which were recorded almost twenty years ago. Gene Hoglan was in fine form on drums, yet the double kick drums which are as much of a hallmark of the band as Burton’s singing don’t seem to come out as fast as the did when Raymond played, whether or not they were the result of man or machine.

Despite having themselves on occasion panned this album, the two tracks played from Digimortal got as good –  if not better – a reception than any other songs on the night. Acres of Skin has the crowd screaming along, whilst Linchpin, which copped some flack at the time of release for being a sell out, got possibly the biggest crowd reaction of the night, with most of the floor moshing along.

Up next came the two tracks from the forthcoming ‘Mechanized’ album, ‘Powershifter’ and ‘Fear Campaign’. Power shifter is an absolute crushing song, with the drums and guitars coming down faster than a raver in the Boiler Room at the end of another Big Day Out. Showing a clear intent to be heavier than their previous direction, the song lacks the more melodious beauty of their later material. But if you’ve been missing the harder edge of Fear Factory on later albums, this song won’t leave you disappointed. ‘Fear Campaign’ followed, and introduced an entirely new concept to the Fear Factory repertoire – the guitar solo. Despite the fact that they’ve waited ten albums to introduce this aspect to their material, it’s a positive sign that they are still willing to try new things after all these years.

Having promoted their new material to the audience, it was time to head in to material from their seminal album, ‘Demanufacture’. ‘Self bias resistor’, ‘Zero Signal’, ‘Flashpoint’, ‘H-K’, ‘Pisschrist’ and the title track all made it onto the set list for tonight’s show, before Replica rounded out the night. It certainly shows the strength of an album that it can still make up over a third of the set even though the band have released four more albums since, and especially considering they didn’t even include one of the more popular songs off the album, ‘Dog Day Sunrise’. Replica, as always, was the perfect end to another great show by Fear Factory. The signature drum beat and Burton’s “Huh!” had the crowd in a delirium, and everyone seemed pretty pleased with themselves, even without an encore, which is now standard routine for most other bands. This was another solid performance from a band that seems to be moving forward with popular support.

And yet there was something that still bugged me when the show finished. Not a single song was played off either of their two most recent albums. Granted, Dino was not a part of either of those albums, and it would be difficult for him to play the songs live, given his constant and open criticism of the material during that time. However, their attempt to rewrite history is somewhat of a slap in the face to those fans who stuck by them during that time, many of whom consider Archetype amongst their finest work to date. To ignore those two albums, and yet play seven songs out of an eighteen song set from an album released fifteen years ago, shows to some extent that Fear Factory, whilst putting on another great show, are still dealing with the past.

After all, it’s not 2004 any more. Just don’t tell Fear Factory that.

FEAR FACTORY – MELBOURNE SETLIST

Shock

Edgecrusher

Smasher/Devourer

Martyr

Scapegoat

Crash Test

Acres of Skin

Linchpin

Powershifter

Fear Campaign

Resurrection

Demanufacture

Self Bias Resistor

Zero Signal

Flashpoint

H-K

Pisschrist

Replica

About Scott Boelsen

Scott is one of the fine co-owners of this establishment, handling the live content side of the site. Since 2008 he has been supplying the site with finely crafted photos. Check out his other work at scottboelsen.com, or boost his ego on facebook