Dino Cazares – Fear Factory

Fear Factory return to Australia this July to celebrate their landmark 1995 release, ‘Demanufacture’. The album has been regarded by fans and critics as the definitive industrial metal release, influencing an evolutionary step in heavy metal.

Metal Obsession had the pleasure to speak with founder and guitarist, Dino Cazares ahead of Fear Factory’s Australian tour. What followed was an insightful look into the creation of ‘Demanufacture’.

Metal Obsession: Australia will be the first country to take part in the celebration of Fear Factory’s landmark album, ‘Demanufacture’. I take it everyone is in good spirits for the tour?

Dino Cazares: No we hate it! [laughs] Of course we’re pumped, man! We think that Australia will probably be the only country that will get to hear Demanufacture in its entirety.  We’ve been asked to take the tour to so many places, but we’re unsure yet. Right now its pretty much Australia that will get to hear it and that’s about it. We really want to concentrate on a new record after the tour.

MO: A lot of artists have a love/hate relationship when it comes to revisiting old albums or songs. How do you feel listening back to the album? 

DC: I love the album just as much as our fans love it. I’m quite proud of the album.

I don’t know why so many artists are like “I don’t want to play that song ever again!”. For me, Replica is one of the biggest songs I ever wrote. I love playing that song live. One of the reasons I love it because it makes a lot of other people happy, you know what I mean? That’s why I love the song and the album so much.

If it satisfies people and if they love the albums and our songs then I know we have done a good job and I’m happy. Its going to be great doing these songs because some of them we haven’t played since the album was released, some of them we have only played on special occasions and some haven’t even been played live at all. Its going to be a great experience doing all these great songs again.

MO: Many have labeled ‘Demanufacture’ as a definitive classic album. Perhaps even going as far as saying the album was an evolution of music which critically redefined the heavy metal genre. 

DC: Well, I have to completely agree with that statement.

There was a lot of key elements which helped us achieve the album, mainly the influence of other bands. Burton and I have such a wide variety of music that we like. We just wanted to blend it all together. We love bands like Godflesh, Ministry, electronic music. We essentially just wanted to take all those influences and stick them in a blender and perhaps create something new. Without a lot of those bands influencing us, we wouldn’t be here.

There was never really a band that was mixing very aggressive vocals with melodic vocals. At the time we never saw or heard anyone else doing that. That style of music has become a staple of metal today.  Looking back at the album today, a lot of kids who listen to metal today may not know where that style started. A lot of people listen to bands like All That Remains, Killswitch Engage and so on.

They think these bands were the ones who started this whole style of music. Nothing against those bands.They’re doing great and I love their music, but I’m just using it as an example.  A lot of people may not know where it started, but we can honestly say it started with Fear Factory. You are right. The album did change the face of metal and it has inspired a whole new legion of bands and metal fans.

MO: There is so much going on when listening to ‘Demanufacture’ that one would say its more than just an industrial metal album. The obvious nodes to heavy metal, grind-core and industrial metal are there, but for me personally, there is a personal connection between the story and the music that engrosses the listener and makes it more a personal journey than a piece of music. 

DC: Burton and I have always been massive fans of sci-fi movies, and growing up as kids, we have always been huge fans of Star Trek and other futuristic shows. When Burton and I were roommates we would always have discussions about starting a band, and relating the music to the science fiction shows we like.  We’d get together and I would say “What if we wrote a soundtrack to those movies?”.

That’s how it all came about. Then we’d be like…”What if we wrote a story for it too?”. Yeah! We’re excited and happy. We worked on our first demo then started working on the first album, ‘Soul of a New Machine’. That album, much like its title was the start of the machine. The beginning of Fear Factory.

Even when we came up with the name of the band, we would get together and get creative. It was an exciting time for us all. We were excited as hell. Our young, fresh brains coming up with these cool ideas. Living together, partying and coming up with all these cool ideas. I’d be sitting there talking to Burton and say “What if this happened!”. We were more than excited.  Fear Factory has a broad meaning. Anything that causes fear, creates fear and manufactures fear. That’s a lot to take in because so many people are afraid of so many things.

What if we all faced our fears and overcame those fears. Perhaps understand what is creating this fear. This could relate to anything. Religion, the state, education, society and technology. We added all those elements into one big melting pot and created all these stories. We wanted to give people something else then reading a bunch of useless lyrics.  “Oh yeah, cool. Lets write a song about riding on my Harley down the street, picking up chicks and drinking beer.” Don’t get me wrong. That sounds like an awesome time. [laughs] But we wanted to make something that was our own.

Back in the day bands like Pink Floyd were doing concept albums like ‘The Wall’ and so on. We were like, we don’t want to rip off Pink Floyd, but we wanted to give it our little twist. We have always wanted something more than just music. Read a story and follow what is going on and get more involved with the album.

MO: Its obvious that movies like Blade Runner, The Terminator and John Carpenter’s ‘They Live’ have played a massive influence in Fear Factory’s story telling. The reoccurring themes of social change and hidden agenda’s is more present then ever.

DC: Not only that, I believe the biggest influence has been society. What we see, where we live and so on. Its essentially the insecurities of man. Man is becoming obsolete due to the rapid advancement of technology and social change. The birth of technology. Government conspiracies, religious institutions. They all play a major role in not only Fear Factory’s lyrics, but also the fear of man.  When we were growing up. We would always be told “If you do this you will go to hell!”. We always had the fear of god in our minds, referring to songs like ‘Pisschrist’.

MO: Do you feel its hard to switch off when writing about these topics when you have your own life to contend to? 

DC: A lot of these aspects do take over our lives without us realising it.  From 1991 to 1994, in those 3 years we experienced the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. We saw the city with our own eyes being destroyed, looting, fires and people losing their minds and killing each other. We saw an earthquake that destroyed the city, we saw fires, floods and shootings. We saw chaos.

It was mainly the riots which impacted us the most. Society was breaking down and something had to change. The change was opposite of manufacture, obviously, ‘Demanufacture’. That is what we saw with out own eyes. The demnaufacture of society where we lived. We knew change was coming.

We saw the future where technology and surveillance would take over. I mean we wrote about the take over of mobile phones in society before anyone started using mobile phones [laughs]. Essentially computers in your hand, a smart phone.  We saw the future and we wanted to integrate what we saw into our lyrics. The lyrics of ‘Demanufacture’ are still as relevant today as they were when the album was released.

MO: I guess you could say you were predictors of the future? 

DC: I like the aspect of futurists. People who write and have their own thoughts of what the future will bring. Have a look at someone like Ray Kurzweil. He’s fucking amazing! He seems to be a million years ahead of everyone else.

Even if you watch some of the science fiction movies we love growing up with. Those ideas have been replicated by us as humans. Its like “What if make the gun from that science fiction movie Lets make a laser gun. Ok! We created it!”, you know what I mean? [laughs]

I’m looking forward to the day when I can just be teleported to Australia. I hope I live to see that in my life time. I wish I could live well into the future to see what happens to us. I’ll be sitting there telling everyone “I predicted it 50 years ago”[ laughs].

MO: Burton C. Bell once described the concept behind ‘Demanufacture’ as this. “The human aspect of society that is slowing becoming more mechanical.” In essence, we’re losing our humanity. Do you feel this is might be an indication of where music might be headed as well? 

DC: Unfortunately a lot of kids in bands these days don’t know how to write because most of them seem to type on their smartphone or computer. It’s funny for you to hear me say that but that is how this generation of kid has been taught. We knew that technology in music would be a big change. We knew that people wouldn’t bother talking to each other.

They would just text each other and that is sadly how it has become.  There is a whole new slue of individuals out there. I call them “laptop-core”. What I mean by that is you could be sitting at Starbucks and have your laptop with you and you could write a whole song with guitars, drums, bass, effects and if you had a microphone I’m sure you could do vocals right there.

You could write a whole song or album on your laptop. It could be hardcore, deathcore or whatever you want to call it. I call it “laptop-core”. There is a whole new generation of kids who don’t even know what an amplifier is, yet they know how to manipulate a program on a computer. It just seems more people are learning off their computers than using conventional methods and that’s how it has become for a lot of people.

MO: Is there a possibility that we may see Fear Factory making another evolutionary step with the news of a new Fear Factory album in the works? 

DC: We’re quite content where we are at this point in time. That doesn’t mean we won’t evolve. You don’t want to evolve to far because you may alienate a lot of people.

You have to find a happy medium and you have to be happy with yourself and that is what we’re talking about. We do want to take it to the next level and make a great conceptual album that will last the test of time. We hope we can create something as good, if not better than, ‘Demanufacture’.

We just need to get out there and see what we can come up with. We are as extremely excited about writing new material as we were when we first started. Every time we come up with the title of an album we all get exited. “What does it mean?”  Right now, Burton and I are searching for the next concept, story and potential evolution of where Fear Factory will head next.

We are very close and we’re extremely happy.  We just want to thank everyone in Australia for the support over the years. We got our first gold record in Australia back in 1996 and we can’t wait to come back their and give you guys ‘Demanufacture’ in its entirety.

Catch Fear Factory in Australia this July performing their landmark album, ‘Demanufacture’ in its entirety.

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THU 4 JULY – BRISBANE, THE TIVOLI – 18+
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FRI 5 JULY – SYDNEY, UNSW ROUNDHOUSE – Lic A/A
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SUN 7 JULY – MELBOURNE, THE PALACE – 18+
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TUE 9 JULY – ADELAIDE, HQ – 18+
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THU 11 JULY – PERTH, METRO CITY – 18+
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